Nov 07, 2017 City Council on 2017-11-07 2:00 PM

Welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, November the 7th, 2007, 6 2 p.m. Councilmember Duff it will be our agenda which is first agenda item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. So we'll go on to request for clarification of agenda items listed on today's agenda November 7th, 2017. Council members any clarifications? Council member Ryan then we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem. Well in V they are amendments that whether those originally come in as an RFQ or RFP sense I just want to clarify on that. And the question is on items L and V okay the the additional expenditures brings us well above the original the original okay all right for both L and V yes sir. Hi I'm Karen Smith purchasing manager I can address a 25% rule it doesn't apply for professional services so it only applies to items that are purchased under local government code 252 which are goods and services. Does that answer it? Okay anybody else clarification? Oh I 'm sorry yes we got several. Mayor Pro Tem? [inaudible] Okay you want that now? Sorry I was off mic. Oh sorry I didn't see the light. Calling item O on item D about ballistic. Item D do we have a someone who can just give us a little clarification? D. Item D is for the tactical team for the police department. I have Deputy Chief Roger White here if you want any specifics about the tactical blankets. Yeah I just don't know what they are and yeah just a brief description and explanation for their use. My name is Roger White it's just a it's a four by eight ballistic blanket it's pliable it's movable we'd use it in SWAT type operate could cover approach of the team you could cover people moving out of just it's a ballistic it's like a big bulletproof vest but it's in a four by eight pattern. So do you match the grant if we were to receive it it would be an entirely state? Yes no match whatsoever. Okay thank you. Fantastic. Mayor Pro Tem on agenda item O that you're pulling do you want a presentation on that? No I don't need a presentation. Okay all right. Councilmember Briggs. On item M about the concrete the light poles I have a question if LED bulbs can be used in these? Who can answer that? And are these I know they're going into a storage but are most of these to replace old existing poles or will these be? Yes the street light poles are strictly just the poles and some of the arms that the lights attached to the pole with it is not anything to do with the actual light itself. We're in the middle of an LED pilot program that we've run through and talked with the City Council committee on environment and we have a test site set up and collecting data on which type of LED light might produce the best type of light output and once we have more data we'll be back to the committee on environment and council to give those findings but this is strictly just the pole. Thank you I wanted to make sure we weren't going to purchase something and then not be able to use it. They can be retrofitted anytime with these poles LED lights can be put on these poles. Okay thank you. And in regarding micro seal I would just cure I'm curious how long that extends the life of the street. Galen Gallen manager of capital director capital projects sorry I give you a great answer it depends it's going to depend on so many factors the weather it's going to depend on the exact condition when we put the micro seal on or the crack seal just so many factors but it does it does tend to extend it for a period of time say for you know five years toward ten years something like that it becomes you know less of a problem for us and it's it's as we've said before it's it's a money well spent on maintenance compared to complete rebuild down the road. Okay all right thank you. Sorry I don't have a better answer but it just depends. Okay I do have a question I'll follow up a question on that one as well are you okay have we because I know that first of all that those are that's being paid out of the street maintenance fund is that correct? Yes sir . And have we priced it are we doing this because it's it's less expensive to have it contracted out than to have staff do it and we've we've sort of gone through a financial analysis of that. It is sir if you think about the dip the sort of the range of street maintenance and repair that we need to do from micro seal and crack seal toward a complete reconstruct and in the middle is pothole repair and we tend to want to focus our guys on doing pothole repair and then having these kind of contracts where we send contractors out to do these prevent ative maintenance type things and we do we do to that financial analysis of is it cheaper for us to do in-house or is it cheaper to contract it out we do that. So rather than hire staff however many another because I know in the past we've hired crews for sewer line replacement to help you know with the backlog so we've we've decided it's less expensive to send it out contract and to add the amount of people that it would take to do this in the three years it was lined up being more than this amount with over contract absolutely okay all right thank you anybody else I've got one on agenda item 5g which is the resolution for the depth for the City Hall West and I just I just raised this just for the council to start thinking about I'm struggling with the one-year kind of time frame I know it says upon completion of the aforementioned duties or on January 1 I'm probably gonna want to talk about that date because I think that's a little far out I think we could probably get that and if they need an extension I'd rather be able to give an extension than to sort of give a year but that we can save that discussion for out there in the meeting I just wanted to share those comments yes sir I'm sorry I do regarding Oh which mayor pro tem mentioned I would like a brief presentation highlighting the what the measurables are sure so that the layperson understands what their task with and what their what they accomplished for the city and with that value add is okay great thank you yes yes sir anyone else all right we'll move on to our work session reports work session report 3a receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the proposed bonnie bray widening improvement project go ahead all right Todd Estes city engineer here to talk to you just a few minutes about the overall scope of Bonnie Bray a little bit of the history I think I'm where we are today Bonnie Bray the project itself extends from south of I-35e all the way down to vintage Boulevard and then goes north up to Windsor so it crosses right next to the UNT campus goes past University Drive all the way up to Windsor it's about seven miles long currently Bonnie Bray is listed as a secondary major or secondary artillery artillery arterial that would be a dangerous scenario secondary arterial on the mobility plan which would mean that we're looking at this as a four-lane divided roadway if you look at it from a long-term projection it is projected to be a major arterial at some point in the distant future if you look at the 20 30 projections to 20 40 projections it does call for being something quite a bit larger which would be more along lines of a six lane divided arterial roadway so currently we have the project broken into two overall phases we've broken it it's got three sub phases for construction but as far as the in-house management of the project and the way we're designing the project you have the southern half which is everything south of I-35e and then you have the northern half which is phases four through six from I-35e north up to Windsor what we've seen is originally the project had an idea that this would cost somewhere around 75 million dollars what we've seen over time as we 've gone through design we've acquired right away and we know what further right aways are projecting to be plus what we see in the cost delivery for construction local inflation in the local economy for construction projects we 're projecting this projects actually close to about an 88 million dollar project so we do have a funding gap at this point to finish the project through all phases what I asked staff to do for me we've got two project managers working through this project on our team and what we asked them to do is lay out a schedule for you so you can understand a little better what we're talking about from a time perspective phase one is already under construction they started construction this summer they're looking to move through construction all the way through the end of or at least to the beginning of 2019 through the end of 2018 as you look at each of these colors they just come into play as far as a visual picture of how do each of these phases play out so you get yellow for design that means we're just still in the design process we're working through the last of the hurdles and the issues from phase two and three that's actually all of that southern amount of work south of I-35e we still have a few elements that are left to finish design we let phase one as part of that first southern phase we let that first to get something under construction before that cost got out of control on us on any further construction items phase two and three have right away issues they had some acquisition issues that were pushing the schedule so phase two is a little bit further ahead it 's about ready to go phase three it has a little bit more work to do but we are getting close to that one from a right away and acquisitions perspective there were a couple of issues working with UNT that we're trying to finalize as far as how the roadways actually configured and it functions some of you may have heard I'm trying to remember the actual term y'all may be able to remind me Noreen the term where we do a reversible lane thank you contra flow the transportation engineers over there so that basically means we have a five lane roadways so you got four lanes two lanes in each direction and I got a middle lane that you normally would use for left turns you've seen that in other parts of town but in this scenario if we have enough traffic we may actually have a light sitting over the top of that lane that middle lane that says this is a lane moving in one direction and then at other times of the day you flip that around and it goes the other direction it's a good way of taking into account when I have very narrow right away I can increase the capacity of the roadway depending on what time of day and how much traffic flows through there so that's one of those items that we're working with UNT to resolve exactly what that looks like and how that functions as you get into phase four five and six that's all part of that northern phase of the project and what you'll see in there is we are under design on those phases four and five we're a lot further along than six six is that it stretched that as it goes north of University Drive up to Windsor we're still in a conceptual design mode but four and five that's where we're getting into the right-of- way discussions we're working with UNT as it borders their property south near I- 35 work with TextDOT there's a lot of utility work that has to be done through there also working with the updates and the ongoing project initiatives that had to go into play for DME that substation between Oak and Hickory you know a lot going on in there that just from a timing perspective it took a lot longer to get there to get all the pieces in play those things are actually from a pure engineering standpoint we're very close to being finished with that closer than 90 95 percent on the design aspect for phase four which is the closed area closest to I-35E as you go farther north from Scripture North we're not as far we're closer to about 30 to in between the 30 to 60 percent milestone which means we're past the conceptual design but we haven't gotten all the little details ironed out part of that is we're looking at how does this roadway get aligned with some of the businesses and some of the other things that are aligned next to the razor property some other things we'll look at a map here in middle be a little bit more clear it also provides a natural progression for construction so instead of having all a bonnie brand or construction at one time and just bogging everything down from a traffic perspective from a safety perspective at North Texas we've been working this one much more linear and systematically so that we can start lining up phases with the way school works with the way football season works and all the different items that go into making this a holistic project and not just let's go to construction quick quick couple questions yes sir Councilman Ryan thank you if you can go back to that last slide you've got on there a hole for funding yes sir it did we have to rearrange because I know that phase six north of University was in the 2014 bond package and then the the section from 35 to the scripture area was in the 2012 and I thought that the that other area along razor ranch that that was part of what they had to put put into that dedicate that to those funds while they were building that right off base on that or no there was funding available and that brought us to the 75 million dollar that was the original cost estimate for all of Bonnie break the problem is that over time as we've both acquired right away and property costs started to become figured out and then as we have seen construction inflation has gone through the roof over the last 10 to 12 years to the tune right now where we're seeing it increase about 1% per month compounded so it's just taking a project that two or three years ago would have been under the 75 million dollar gap it has just blossomed and as we go through this project delivery process we go to construction on these projected timelines that's where we're seeing the cost be so we're accounting for the fact that we want to have everything designed will have all the right away acquired so that if we do find some other funding sources out there say we get some extensions through RTR through cog or we find some grants or some other sources of funding that doesn't necessarily put us into the next step program to fund that particular portion of Bonnie and bray we'd be able to go ahead and get started just as soon as the funding is available so to follow up on that so what I'm hearing you say is phase one two and three we have the funding for that and so those those are moving forward yes sir so and based upon your first slide that was 55 million yes sir and then the rest of them are 33 million so that means we've got you said we had originally 75 million I think yes sir so that is just 20 million yes sir why would we not because I'm most of that is RTR funds I would think we have a 20% match is that right or didn't we issue bonds for our 20% match yes all right so are there time restrictions on those RTR funds no we started spending it with the first phase so we're spending that money okay why wouldn't we not then and and this is probably an engineering question which I'm obviously not an engineer so if we got 20 million left yes sir how far would that get us with that complete phase four it could definitely complete phase four it can even go a long way into phase five right part of what we're dealing with is is twofold one there's a timeline and progression for acquiring right away sure we have to have right away for the roadway itself that will take anywhere from 12 months to 18 months depending on the time involved particular right away particular easement we're trying to acquire to make the roadway work that's one component that we have in here so where it says hold for funding we were just trying to find a good way to say I'm trying to get right away wrapped up I may also want to from a construction phasing standpoint I may not want to have everything all out there in construction on the entire length of Bonnie Bray at the exact same time so we were looking at this as a much more sequential construction time but no and I understand that yeah that makes sense I guess this is my only thought on this is that what this is not saying is that we will not proceed with the construction of phase four or five if we don't have allocation to fund the entire phases of four five and six in other words you're correct what we're moving forward we're gonna continue to require right of way if we get through with phases one two three we've got the right of way for phase four we've got the funds we're gonna start constructing we're not gonna wait to get funding to complete everything else and that's exactly what we have in the construction timeline okay okay all right we maybe we could have chosen some better words there and then I just want to make sure I understand what the message is but we do have a can we do have a gap in the funding there and the one thing I don't want to have lost is is there is a gap in the funding to make this project whole based on our projections today for what it's going to cost us we do have other projects that were also in the 14 bond in the 2012 bond and previous bonds that need to be made whole as well because they are in the same boat so this is one of those options where we say we're continuing forward we want to make this thing go forward as fast as possible which is why we're going to continue with design right away and if it's the council's direction if it's if we're so directed that of course we'll move construction as fast as possible but this is also the first time we're giving you a good look at when construction would realistically start regardless of the funding but I know I still have a funding gap in there okay so I'm gonna back up just a little bit so then what I'm hearing from a policy perspective and if this might be something that we don't decide today that I think we need to come back at number one we need to come back and know which ones of these in the 2014 are short as well we I mean I'm sure we've had some summary of that but we need to get a handle on that but on this particular one so I'm just trying to I'm not sure I've got a clear answer yet and that's not because you haven't answered it clearly I might not be asking the question clearly okay so to me the policy question is yes does this council want to move what we've got we've got 20 million dollars using your numbers yes after completing phases one two and three four right of way whatever else design and and or construction for phases four five and six we have about a 13 million dollar funding gap which may be that may be all the phase six phase six may I mean that may be what it costs for phase six I guess it's actually I think believe phase six right now has costed at nine million dollars we're looking at about a three million dollar gap on phase five okay all right so do we want to say with the money that we already have allocated to continue to move forward with let's say phase four which we have enough to probably do a turnkey on that as far as design right of way in construction and not wait until we get the funding for the entire project before starting on phase four that that's the question I think in my mind is unless you're saying we're already doing that okay I'll jump in and help time out he's trying his best we we've spent the last six months mayor lifting all the dollars going back as far as 2005 out of the finance department ledgers and onto spreadsheets for every department where we've ever had a bond election we've got probably 20 to 30 million dollars of projects out there that are 10 years or older that have not been built and we've got another a number of other projects from the 2012-2014 bond issues because of the time value of money that by the time from the time looking from 2002 to 2017 we probably are going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 50 million dollars short on all those projects we will our intention is we've had we just got through our second monthly meeting we spend all day Fridays going at the end of the month going through the CIPs putting together plans funding gaps identifying funding gaps that sort of thing my intention is to be back to you in January so you can have the policy discussion about if certain projects are short funding and we need to hold those off for the next bond election in order to clear the queue which ones would those be and we'll have some recommendations for you and I would assume we'll spend the first and second quarter of next year working our way through that but the fact of the matter is is there's a number of these projects that are short there's some that are we just don't have the funding for we're not going to be able to cobble together enough one-time dollars in the next few years to finish them all and you're gonna have to give us some direction at some point what you want us what actions wants to take but it's taken us six months to get it into a format so you can have that discussion right so you're you're basically hitting on exactly the issue okay what I'm talking about specifically this project and if we received RTR funding I 'm assuming it's specifically for this project yes sir so we've got to spend the RTR funds on this project so again I pose the question and if it if staff has not decided we're going to not do anything but acquire wide of lay or any other kind of expenditures for phases four five or six until we get full funding or where you stand today your belief is we're going to get through phases one two and three we're continuing to move on phase four as far as we've already got the design almost finished yes sir that little part that says hold for funding is where bid would be there plus then construction filled in right so if we've got the design finished what keeps us from sending it out to bid I know we don't want to have it all in the construction at the same time but at least we know we've got it scheduled for in the out years instead of hold for funding so I'm trying to understand what is the thought of engineering and city management at this time of we've got money to finish to continue moving forward and finishing one of the phases is that what we're planning to do within a construction timeline that will be convenient to the construction of the this model ship this model assumes that we're working within the 75 million dollars that was allocated simply for Bonnie Bray and it's in those hold for fundings basically are showing you the 12 13 14 million dollars that were short it doesn't necessarily mean that but the future funding could be a reallocation of our own existing dollars that the council makes in in January you may decide that Bonnie Bray is such an important project that if we have to move some other projects to the back burner then we've basically filled in all those hold for funding future funding gaps so the dollars there they are sold as being individual project related we will certainly spend all the leverage dollars that we have or you're going you're going to have to make some decisions whether you would like us to go ahead and complete these projects at the expense of some others and that's sort of the boat that you're going to be in in January but it doesn't mean that we're not going to get these projects designed and ready to bid it just means if you would like us to make sure this gets funded and completed or to make some other trade-offs did I answer your question or no not really okay so I'm not doing a very good job of communicating all right I'll tell you what I would like to see yes sir what I would like to see is that we've yes sir I personally we've been selling this Bonnie Bray I know we've got bond programs but that we've got projects we haven't done for ten but this one we received 80% match and I'm just saying if to move forward with the funding we have to build as much of that project as possible without saying that well our 20% match we may want to move that somewhere else over to some other project and we've not changed direction from that at all okay this is just what the dilemma is I mean our path forward is to go forward without stopping and if somebody were to come back and say you know what maybe we need to put the brakes on phase six for a little bit okay so we're we're moving forward as fast as we can so then this is this would be my ask of counsel so I would like to see that we can say give direction to staff on phase four that we go ahead and put in the timeline like we have phase one two and three in a timeline we have it phased out in construction yes sir that we fill in not to bid and we're gonna do and we're gonna schedule the construction unless we just can't do that based upon the amount of time that bids will be held open in other words you've got a years no we're not gonna hold it so that that's all I'm trying to figure out but anything except maybe some design or logistics until we receive all the fun we run into a catch 22 with that because then we just keep we sort of perpet uate this time issue so I agree I may be missing something well okay the whole for fundings was how do we account for the gap between the end of design because the impetus that we have on in engineering is designed for all the projects we have on the books right now capital projects needs to be complete by the end of next year no later than if not sooner projects here we're trying to get everything designed shovel ready so that if there is an impetus to get the project out faster we can but what I do have here listed is this in ph asing so if I were just gonna go say I had money's not the issue what I've laid out is how we would construct it right hold on a second daughter you say you want to be sure the 75 million gets spent if we have to break phase two into two phases because we run out of money you just want to be sure that he's doing I'm sorry phase five if we had to break that in half because we ran away you just want to be sure that 75 million is getting fully spent on this project yes yes yes okay and you just keep moving forward okay yeah and obviously you find a good place to cut it right but no I just because it's out what I'm but I thought I heard was the projects were really far behind on and then we're gonna come and ask council we got this big product all these projects we got to do we only have this limited amount of money available where do you want to allocate these two is what I'm hearing you know we got a do you want to move some over to finish this project which means this one won't get done sure and what I was hearing was this would be part of that discussion and I'm saying if we got 75 million dollars for this project let's build it out 75 million dollars okay yeah our focus is it does our focus is not to delay him but at the same time the discussions out there no understand yes what I think I'm hearing you say is we have 75 million I'm looking yes sir and we have enough money to do phases one two and three we have money to do for the 75 million to design and probably the ROW right of way acquisition for phases four five to do most of the construction for phase four and I think we do it and then if we and we stop where we run out but what I'm hearing our engineers say is that we they would like to do all of the design at the same time right because it's got all connect and probably acquisition at the same time to match the design yes sir and then we'd probably be able to get phase four done maybe some of phase five maybe not if the cost keep going as you're suggesting maybe not yes but but one caveat for me if we're acquiring right of way for phase six we're spending that money but we don't think it's going to be done for five or ten years that's silly yeah I mean I think we need to spend the money on what we think we can actually get done especially since phase six is a pretty natural breaking point it's from University Drive I believe on to Windsor or 77 highway 77 so short kind of geographical break from the road yeah I just don't want to have a bunch of sunk costs into right of when we're going to be able to finish that project I think that's a waste of money and quite honestly I don't know how else to put it because it sits there and we've got it sunk in and we're not really doing anything in our schedule here like I said before basically was looking at right away in acquis itions because construction even on phase six if we just kept going and we find a way to close that gap to 2021 that's not that far away right you know we're still through well by the time you do right away acquisitions up there and you've completed design that's the window of time where it's between I've finished closing on all the property and I've started constructions maybe 18 months so I'm not holding long term and that's true but three years based upon what you just say seeing 12 percent a year or twelve and a half percent a year yes sir and in three years that's 36 percent and so right you're talking about now you've got another ten or fifteen million dollars added on to the project well and we took that into account in this cost projection okay so you've already I've already put in a cut so this is a number okay takes that so this isn't today's dollars this is what you anticipate them being out in 2021 or whenever that yes sir okay on that last phase let's that's what the cost we expect to be so then 10 million of this so most of most of this increase is that anticipated construction cost increase yes sir okay yes mayor Pro Tem can you explain to me what the where the dividing line between phase four and five are on slide two and then I also have another comment regarding of properties north of sorry north of so the dividing line between phase one and phase two phase one I don't know if I can get a mouse on here there it is so phase one correct me where I'm wrong Doreen starts at Roselon and comes down to vintage that's phase one that's what's under construction today phase two is actually vintage road widening that facility out to a four lane divided which also takes into account that it ties into the future loop 288 where it crosses the interstate phase three is from Rosaline north I 35 I was asking about phase four and five okay and four and five it starts at I 35 e that these are actually reversed they should have been switched before we put them on here and I apologize for that okay phase four is from I 35 e up to scripture it's actually just a little short of scripture and then phase five goes from scripture up to University Drive okay that's helpful so I agree with the mayor that we should be paying as we go essentially I'm not too worried about right-of-way acquisition on phase six because we own such a large amount of property in the phase six section well I don't know what the design will be but we we own quite a bit of property over there my concern is more with that section between oak and scripture because the last time we discussed this was kind of as an ancillary matter and acquiring one of the pieces of property on scripture Street and I wasn't aware that nine homes were included in that acquisition or in the design so I just want to have a you know policy discussion about going forward I know that there are some best practices in design however we may want as a council to decide you know it's worth spending more money or it's worth a different direction if we can keep the the sanctity of the neighborhoods intact so that would be my request of council kind of along those lines I remember us discussing that intersection scripture and oak the house there and then also who's going to be doing that acquisition I don't know where we are with that and that that initial contract for the consultant there were some questions and some details missing so I don't know where we are with that I my question so I'd like to know where we are there in that house and and and mayor pro tem it raised the issue of the curve that's currently there versus engineering saying it should be straightened out and where we are with that because that plays into design where do we leave that is my question right so there's multiple parts to that one so we just kind of jump in because that was where we were headed next is exactly where you were pointing us if we look at the alignment what I have up here on this slide right now is the what we would call the alignment where the roads gonna lay after we get done with the project this is where our current alignment lies if you look at where Bonnie break goes under this is I 35 here north is actually to the right but oriented this way it was a little easier to zoom in so we could show you more of the picture the red the blue and the green this was a council item I believe this was a presentation that was given a few years back that showed the multiple versions of this that engineering actually looked at from an alignment standpoint there were costs done at that point to say where does this alignment for this future road need to go does it need to follow more or less the same alignment where it is even when we do that if I'm gonna put in the roadway facility that we're required to put in for both the mobility plan and what our current traffic model show we need to have there from just a pure volume of traffic the roadway needs to be at least five lanes wide and what that does for you is it doesn't appreciably change the way it currently functions today other than that makes it a lot safer for traffic as it moves through it does give a little bit more capacity but long term the traffic projections actually show a six lane divided roadway which would be larger than four lanes going in two directions to the tune of at least another thousand I think it's a pre-temp could help me to you a little bit here we're looking at today 850 cars per lane per today but if we were to go to another vehicle to another lane we'd add another 850 cars per day today what we have per hour sorry you got me on that one so per hour basically where we're at today is we have the maximum volume the road can handle today and what this does is it makes a safer roadway but the alignment that was chosen provides for the future expansion of Bonnie Rae to six lanes as you go further north there's so many businesses and homes on the southern section between scripture all the way down to 35 either apartment complexes businesses that the cost just to take that and make a bigger roadway would have been exorbitant the cost projections back then were five to six million dollars higher than what I think you would even see today so the alignment that was chosen by council direction a couple of years ago was what you see in green which does end up taking the nine homes in question at scripture now the roadway the way it curves as you go into scripture this is the picture down on the bottom scripture runs kind of up and down here and there's Bonnie Rae with the big hump here one of the things you don't see in this image that is another cost prohibitive item for Bonnie Rae to say if we just wanted to push the whole thing off to the west a little farther up on the screen and get it away from these homes there's a battery of gas wells that sits right here to move those relocate them to put Bonnie Bray in would be about another 50 million dollars just to relocate the gas wells to make them safe and usable you're gonna add another five to ten million dollars on top of that so this is the safest and least expensive project that we could come up with for the future alignment of Bonnie Bray well thank you and so I think for me that makes sense that the sticking point is it's it's different than what we heard I'm not sure about the past councils but when we last when I was sitting there we last discussed this it was a curve issue that engineering said that the curve didn't make sense and so now coming back and saying it's a future expansion issue is different and so I don't understand it's not different what they said before the curve plays into both okay when I'm designing a six lane roadway I'm designing for cars that are traveling 45 miles an hour to get from the south side to the north side of the roadway from I have 35 up to University Drive and because the cars are traveling a little faster by design the curves have to be shallower so I can't move the road as quickly as what Bonnie Bray was set up before the design speed we call it design speed the design speed of the roadway today is 30 miles an hour or less is what it's actually designed for with those curves so that's why that curve became an issue in the past is is to provide a major arterial or even a secondary arterial I 'm designing to a faster speed of vehicle so so so let me I can quote you as saying if you put that in straight yes sir that the speed up and down Bonnie Bray will be 45 miles per hour is that what you just said it will be signed 45 miles an hour because that's the way we designed it to me doesn't mean that you won't have people who decide that they like to go 70 they would do that on any road in town if they want to do sure no no that's that's interesting and so for me I think the other question I have is why if we're going to ultimately expand again I don't know how long that is but why are we why are we putting the island a permanent island in the middle understanding we're going to take it out later is there no other way to have a temporary we wouldn't take it out later you just you'd leave it and expand on it expand outwards yes sir okay got it okay then that's helpful and for me just last thing me personally as a discussion I happen to agree with the council member Gregory I think we should go ahead and acquire that right away because everyone knows all you have to do is take a short drive around Discovery Park and even though we own a majority of that property there's going to be future development that it's going to affect that those rates significantly I think and it's already going in and so I think you're talking about real numbers especially if we're if we set a hard kind of target of three years and hold to that I think to go ahead and lock that in and have and goal in mind would not be as cost prohibitive as it may look just because my understanding of that area in is growing so fast that I think we would find ourselves having a hard time once that 's further developed that's just my my gut so thank you council member Gary and then mayor pro tem I'm sorry yeah sorry yes speaking of the nine homes the last time we had the meeting I did ask for historical significance from Roman and did get that Miranda and would like for that to be shared with council since it wasn't in our backup I thought it was pretty interesting to look at those homes couple items so with respect to the curve is it not possible to align the road with the curve but have a section of the road that 's 30 miles per hour as opposed to 45 miles per hour part of what we're getting into is providing the divided roadway we have a lot of constraints over on the razor ranch side that was going to make this a very difficult project to just retain this and try to push out this way not to mention that I've got a hospital complex medical office building right in here when we started looking at pushing the right-of-way out into this area it didn't leave a much of anybody's homes and front yards left because we were already getting into the edges of their property of their houses themselves you weren't going to have any room left and that's where we thought well the best place would be to go ahead and put in the roadway that needs to be there if I try to push this exact same roadway around I'm still going to be along and next to and right on top of most of these houses right but if if traffic's going by at 30 miles an hour that 's a really different experience for the neighborhood than if it's going by at 45 miles per hour it would be yes you're absolutely right it but there are constraints I wouldn't be able to get as many cars through there long term which is I grant granted is not the primary look at anything if we're going down the complete streets path of looking at a street yeah I guess I'm just really struggling with the idea that we have to straighten this road out because having lived on California and Oregon I mean I've taken curves it way faster than 40 miles an hour that were a lot a lot more steep grade and I just I mean I'm really having trouble conceptualizing of why the road has to be straight just from a physical standpoint I just don't understand my experience has not led me to believe that that's the case the other thing I wanted to mention about just a point of clarification for phase six well what let me go back so that that speed issue is for me that's really important because you're talking about a neighborhood and a park so you're gonna have kids I think kids will be right now they have a really protected area to get to park and to get into the park area that's separate from the street but with this alignment the kids will essentially be right up on the street with the park area so I think that's another reason to try to decrease the speed through there in general I mean it's no different than a school zone in my mind because there's children you know on foot there so I'm gonna really I really do think that speed needs to be lower and if that changes our design all the better because it provides more of a buffer for the neighborhood regarding phase six just to be clear phase six is University to Windsor correct yes sir so there would only be three property owners there's North Lakes Park which is us there's razor ranch investments and then there's the HEB that owns the very corner at University so I just want to be clear because you mentioned Discovery Park and that's on the other side so that's not a part of phase six and from the issue of redes igning the alignment through here we could certainly look at slowing things down but you're still going to come into the same right away needs for the road way you're you're not going to get away from looking at these same nine homes I can definitely put more of a curve into it we can redesign it to slow things down but you're still looking at the same right away takes I think that's okay it 's just I'm looking at the neighborhood from a holistic perspective or having a four-lane divided road with cars going 45 miles an hour it's just it 's different experience and what they have right now I understand yes thank you I struggle with that because what struggle with what the nine homes because it's not everyone that's ever lived on that street understands what that street is our house is right in the middle of that street I grew up there and you're terrified to get out of your driveway right now I mean it's not it's not it is a commercial street in every way but for there's a stretch of houses on this commercial street and so I don't and the fact of the matter is there's four owners nine houses but maybe three four owners and so it's not this traditional neighborhood that it's being painted to be I mean the one house on the corner I you know we'll look at the document and see what that says and that's the one X factor but the rest of those houses it's not it's not a neighborhood and if you've tried to back out of there which I have many a times I mean it is flat-out dangerous I mean as is and so I don't share those concerns and I'll tell you right now from from when it snows from being a kid growing up McKenna Park you're on that hill and you slide down that's on the snow and you're in the middle of Bonnie Bray right now you know when you when you're playing you go straight out into the street and so there's no there's no buffer that healed that lines up lines it doesn't fall it doesn't fall in that little embankment where the trees are to protect you it's right there in the middle of the street and so when you're rolling down the hill when it's snowing or on a sled we always stopped in the middle of the street and so I don't think that it's it's that traditional buffer that you would think it is and that's just based on experience and so for me and I do believe the the growth matters because razor-rance is going to develop that that property and it's going to butt up right against it and then you're the hospital isn't going anywhere it's growing and so I think you you are kind of at a year between a rock and hard place and so again I would have I need someone to explain to me different than what I already know that there's three homeowners for those nine houses and most of them are empty or torn down or ready to be torn down just waiting on us you know and so and we've already bought the one house and so we're two hundred thousand dollars in on the corner so for me I think we're we're down the road but for looking at the information about the one house I think to characterize it as a traditional neighborhood and I 316 Bonnie break anyone can use that driveway and try it back out of there I mean it is it's it's risky at best right now so thank you as we're talking about this and speeds of lanes I am remembering back to when Carroll Boulevard was taken from a two lane road in the neighborhood to a six lane road and the fact that we had to take out the city had to buy houses and they were completely removed which is why you have for the most part no residential homes on that side they went ahead and did six lanes the the original discussion was do four lanes and then come back and do two lanes later but they went ahead and did all six at the same time because it was going to be less costly in the long run to to do the whole thing to acquire the property so country of this on Carroll Boulevard limit set at 30 or 35 there are we having trouble keeping people within that speed limit my guess is yes but it might it might be interesting to get some some data okay on that can do that because even though we might post it for less we probably need to design the roads for what people are really going to be driving them on your exactly so that so that when it's wet and it's slick that we don't have a slip and slide of crude the other thing is are we talking about as we're doing the right-of-way acquisitions acquiring the land for the for the ultimate six lane configuration are we talking about just acquiring land right now for the four lanes in the path forward in the past has not been for the ultimate six lane configuration now it has been just to acquire what was needed to put in what you see should be curious to find out if we if we wanted to acquire the ultimate build out what the projections would be for how much that shrinks our ability to extend the project north yes we can absolutely do that because I think that that would be because just as construction prices will not go down the the prices for real estate in that area will not go down either yes sir thanks a couple comments one is let's let's not lose sight of something six lane build out we're only doing this project because we've received about 50 to 55 million dollars in order to do this project I mean when they allocated those funds they said we got funds if you have some several ray and mayhill a six years to this whole thing at the city's dime is phase two of I-35 it's going to be a ways down the road because we're not going to have my hunch is we won't have that government participation so and look this is the proverbial thing that cities always struggle with in a growing city you have situations where this alignment how many houses are required based upon the safety and the engineering because because why do we want to put that much ending it is to accommodate more traffic and to get it flowing that's why it's labeled a certain so we'd have to really take a long hard look at that because if that's how we want to keep it based upon these nine houses then we shouldn't be spending 50 million dollars on my question is phase two and I apologize if I'm asking something that's in the backup because we can and I didn't get to read all of it but if we go back to the slide for phase two and then we'll let you get through your presentation I'm sorry I just get the computer to go back yeah so on phase two this is this is and refresh my memory how much that is being estimated to cause between because we are we already a cry the water way or I mean so we've already got all that done we've designed it that is left Noreen come up to the microphone please thank you okay so this is this is gonna sound really crazy I real face to right now I understand it's the loop 288 we've been talking about Luke to a day for a long time I mean it's not let's closer but we've been talking about it for a long time that is a very small stretch of road from highway 77 to what is that out 35 leave yes sir yeah it's too lame and you've got a couple subdivisions down there you've got the vintage and then you've got you know the ones that there by the gas well so when right now we really don't have the need out there to do that and the quote-unquote expansion I think we need to relook at that I mean I know that's been in the books I know but so if we have a if we have a limited amount of funds where could these funds be better allocated to really address it but in the near future we raise a ranch is going to get built out they're gonna have some resident on on north of around the university this expansion I think we're that short like if we could just almost all of phases four and five and some of phase six in other words move and reallocate those funds to this this part that actually needs to be done I think that's the more prudent because that's that's not a road to nowhere like a bridge to really not that heavily trafficked and traveled because of just the lack of density that's out there so go ahead well I'd like to hear from the engineers I think that maybe the engineers have talked about doing that because phase one in phase three right and when it gets down to the southern terminus someplace to go with what you're thinking was on that as far as the prior thinking on that phasing sit with that now some of the is the traffic demand out there today no it's it is a good cut through for commuters who are going to live in Denton or going to form the standpoint of does it have that cut will it have that demand in three and a half to five years who knows meeting this entire project in the next five year span I think it's a valid point you could still complete this project five years out towards the tail end of this entire project that might make the other phases whole that is a cut back yeah from but if you're closer to 35 and the Bonnie Bray interchange there 35 and 35 W then you're gonna go that way yes if you want to go to Fort Worth you're gonna cut down through that crazy winding road that's in the creek bottoms that's I would really see what our heart do and look at if is there a way we can reallocate that and switch them to the other ones that are going to be more branched between University Drive and Windsor that's there 's a lot of traffic shopping center absolutely okay and this is a big reason why we wanted to bring this to you good yes to get some good feedback on that but onward and upward in this next year although we are revisiting the phase two scenario so we'll take a look at that then of course phase four some of the risks that we're working through railroad crossing and purist part of that phase three construction so that will actually go to construction ahead of all the roadway which is another reason why you see a volume and capacity that's needed on that north end when we bring that water line all the way up to the water tower at so and then of course we've got some very we've been working hand-in-hand with UNT with TX dot to make sure that everything we're doing we're doing this together some unique opportunities and we've kind of talked about a lot of one that I thought was very unique and it was something I forward to you all was what about what happens that when we move all this well a unique opportunity that we have in front of us is the Parks Department is looking at putting in this are accessible playground for kids there at McKenna Park from where it's currently sits today and put it on scripture playground kids that do have it around that much faster it's a unique opportunity we have here to have kind of a win-win situation for both sides yeah you're talking about leaving the park in the exact same place and then putting a giant street that goes really fast right now I'm an ADA playground there for do it do we plan on putting a fence or anything like that around the park for safety it's certainly something we could look at there absolutely and one of the things to remember as well as when you capture there will be a stoplight there so it's not like this people will be slowing down anyway because that is a natural intersection to have thanks it's along the way yes sir I know that asked south of the railroad part of this project as far as put in there are several pieces where we 're doing storyline the dry forks who are lying of the project and yes it is even though it's been said it was a separate project it is part of that where the where the railroad crossing is on Bonnie Bray yes sir the sewer line stops there coming down Bonnie Bray but I understand the city's acquired eas ements that's part of this yes sir that's part of what has actually been holding up some of phase three is getting all of that taken care of so we can go to construction with that great all right any other questions yes 1550 Airport Road yes sir where it currently becomes Bonnie great and that's gonna have to run stop into the new Bonnie Bray I understand the kind of dates as to when they're gonna I don't have an answer for that but I can find out for you okay absolutely we'll look into that any other questions gosh I saw 10 to 20 slides that's the engineers putting slides together for you right there any other questions thank you and I appreciate it all right agenda item 3a is received report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the solid waste department and he sponsorship program good afternoon mayor members of City Council have a very short presentation for you this afternoon shouldn't take more than maybe an hour and a half actually should be pretty quick we have a brief discussion on kids look at how you cleared the room it's all it takes base watershed protection divisions be seeking a little bit of direction from you this after you have a little bit of deja vu as bug as you can to DME regarding in addition that the budget was reduced from a hundred thousand to fifty thousand our sponsorship program is very similar cycling irresponsible waste practices over the last couple of years our budget and I'll detail a little bit about similar to solid waste sponsorship program and that is to promote the pollution prevention storm water water quality and all that goes into meeting the city 's MS4 permit requirements there were budgets about half of solid waste in the nine thousand and ninety five hundred dollar range on an annual basis the lion's share both speed would keep them beautiful and a number of the programs that KDB puts on we feel like there's a great deal synergy between not only in the programs that KDB supports in fact in the KDB contract with the city obligated to provide about ten thousand dollars toward KDB's program of services in addition to that solid waste also sponsors other events the KDB hosts like the red similarly the watershed distal a great American cleanup as well as other events at the entirety of the watershed divisions sponsorship budget is really do you have some other sponsorships that have included some community events and industry organization cup where I provide some details on that we were probably going to be rethinking some of that we thought there was a great deal value and the programs that we're supporting with KDB but we'd like to look into for some of the other community events versus just providing a sponsorship supported operationally versus maybe a sponsorship and the board essentially what we're recommending for both watershed protecting policies and provisions for our PB and council approval appears well namely that it need have equal and further a charitable cause or a public interest in the event that we do have a sponsorship both the watershed quarterly basis to both the PB and the council direction we're seeking is our recommendation is we adhere to the same provisions that DME has we're up this year to about 15 ,000 in future years that would give us what we've highlighted we do want to maintain the watershed protection sponsorships at their current level leave in fact that that's part of the sponsorship program so pending council direction will swing back with a similar resolution can you kind of can you explain the keep Denton beautiful relationship budget or is that city budget and how does how does that work if that 's part of the city and then we grant ourself money right so there's a number of ways or organizations are constructed in that the solid waste department supports and beautiful ie personnel things like that the entirety of the program's budget however comes from the board so whenever whether it's solid waste or the watershed protection division or another city department supports an event like say Redbud festival the great American cleanup we're providing funds for that particular event yeah so along the lines of the KDB question our sponsorships to them are total 20,500 for the year that you put up there so you're proposing that it would go down the let me back up once the solid waste entire budget is 22,000 for fiscal year 17 18 what we'd be recommending is we would 9,000 or 9,005 number of the areas our assistant director of environmental services she can speak a little bit more good afternoon for next fiscal year you are proposing to our sponsorships okay great and then I have another KDB question thank you should have funding that's out of a different fund it's the tree tree fund correct I'm trying to piece together the Katie there's a sponsorships and then we pay their rent out of something what what fund do we pay their rent out of all the O&M personnel rent other operational expenses that comes out of the solid waste fund the sponsorship that is above and beyond any of the sponsorships that we do here is funded separately outside of the boat okay so then what is the O&M that we pay for for KDB I would have to look I can get you an exact answer on that I mean I'm trying to figure out to KDB which it's not really if they're already getting three hundred thousand dollars of sponsorship from solid waste well if you reduce the total and they reduce KDB by some amount not necessarily in your backup I believe it's exhibit three and I can put it up here on the board if we need to there are a number of other community events that solid waste had provided sponsorships for in the past are sure that that provided some outreach and some education we believe that that makes sense yeah thank you that was going towards the end giving from 20 to 29 thousand in sponsorships and we're talking about now as I looked at that things that were sponsoring to the mission of solid which which were they're actually diverting and they keep very careful records of how much in weight material they've diverted from the land quite the same connection to the mission so I would understand reducing it some but I want to make sure that that that to support the kinds of nonprofits that are actually and and straight and their reduction and reducing the impact on the land that that's exactly our approach is let's not just throw a blanket out there in terms of sponsorship so let's look at the event let's look at the organization and make sure that there's that synergy that can that that's definitely where we want to be involved either in sponsorship or some type of support from an operational standpoint any other questions so direction is to bring back the proposed policy that you wrecked that you had up here on the screen that's correct so that's the direction you're looking for and from council is it looks like we have forward thank you very much thank you you bet last work session item is agenda item 3c receive report hold discussion gift staff direction regarding changes with the Department of Developmental Services and update of the Denton Development Code rewrite pride before we get started on this who was in charge of the graphics of the presentation my boss I'm just not just they're good I enjoyed reading it yeah there's some good graphics I'm not joking I know everybody 's laughing because they think I'm being facetious or sarcastic I think it's very creative and and sends the message that we want to send so excellent well thank you mayor council it's a it's an extreme privilege and honor to be able to present to you an update of Development Services and absolutely want to give you a little bit of color with it because we're excited with what's happening and I think that the community as well as yourself will be excited with it Development Services is a community partner and what we do is is focused on excellence and customer service and serving those that come to our counter and those that come to the community to make dent in a better place we're focused on having positive interactions between staff and the public of where we start and where we go and really with a focus on responsive service staff is better understanding our need to be problem solvers and how it is that we go forward to make certain that when people come to us that we're able to serve their needs the overarching goal with with Development Services that of sustainability and life safety so we have to make sure that our community is here today tomorrow and well into the future we do that through making certain that we're planning properly that we have the adequate infrastructure in place that we maintain that infrastructure appropriate zoning our construction practices are current and best that they can be as well as prop property maintenance and those regulatory strategies so we have to make certain we have certain requirements that we have to enforce and we want to do that by virtue of making sure that we do it with a with a practical common-sense approach and ultimately then we benefit by the fact of the sustainability and managing our resources the purpose in Development Services and being a one-stop-shop is to expedite responsible development so we want to make sure that that those that choose to develop in Denton have the means to do that and we can expedite it we're doing that by listening to our customers we're hearing what it is that that's being said our constituents and the new numerous stakeholders that we have both internally and externally have to drive the business model that we use and where we go we are in the midst of comprehensive transformation of their our business practices we are reevaluating everything that we do and how we do it working to implement best practices so we can ultimately save our our customers time energy and ultimately money in doing the business that they do in them as we do this we're rethinking we're rethinking how we do business and it's from the customers perspective and I have the two graphics here just to give you an example of our our new organizational structure being on the left versus the existing organization or the previous organizational structure on the right it's very it's very very much an indicator of what our customers felt that it was layered compartmentalized and confusing so we 've flattened the organization we simplified the processes and ultimately trying to make sure that we have a very clear line of communication for for our staff and for our customers to understand where they need to go question real quick yes go back to that order chart if you wouldn't mind does the the new one represent even the vacant positions that we have I mean so yes I know that we're looking at how we stand it up sort of temporarily with you know some some third-party contractors who are helping us to reestablish it and get a staff back up so that represents if we were fully staffed at least today what that would represent yes it's just it's it's a much simpler approach without having a lot of fluff and glitter we're just really going to the basics we 're trying to build a foundation that that's going to support the business that we need to do so I'm looking at the old one yes there are obviously unless and I could count them pretty quickly but so what I'm and again don't have the backup in front of me because so if I were to blow that up the old one you're saying that the very top square is the same top square that's on the new and the green and then the and everything under that is is the all those departments that you listed under how many people how many positions were in the old and how many positions now are in the new great point so there are there are a couple of pieces to this that may not be as clear all right one is is that we've we've collapsed or consolidated some of the positions we still have the the FTEs per se but we don't have necessarily titles in different individualized positions so instead of having areas of expertise with a particular title what we 've done is we've we've modified that so you have more boxes on the on the right org chart but you have the same number of FTEs that that's one piece of this a second piece is that we have removed some of the the reporting so for example when we talk about DRC engineering we've taken those engineers and they are under the city engineer so some of that on the old they're just totally off out of the picture correct okay all right correct okay that helps understand so yeah all right we haven't necessarily reduced FTEs at this point in time but we do have vacancies and we're ultimately evaluating whether we fill those vacancies or if we through efficiencies and best practices don't really have the need to fill those okay fantastic thank you um ultimately what we're trying to do is our goal is really to make life easier for our customers that's our that's our primary focus and we need to do that by training our staff we need to to make sure that we have a flattened organization but we train the staff to be aligned with that flattened organization how is it that we function more effectively and efficiently doing the business the way that we do we've worked very hard to eliminate barriers not only in the divisions the department but citywide I couldn't do a lot of what we've been able to do and what I'm going to talk about a little further in this presentation if it wasn't through the help of other departments in the city so engineering and the fire department and any number of departments have been very very very beneficial and us being able to be more successful in what we've been we were our goal is to simplify processes and virtually every process that we have again if we can save the time and the money of our customers we're doing our job we need to be more predictable we need to be consistent in the applications that we're providing we need to do a better job of communicating we have to we have to improve communication both internally and externally and using different vehicles to provide that communication we've worked very hard to improve response times we've we've made some progress with that and we continue to work on that and and we will absolutely minimize those response times or those delays and ultimately we're our goal is to update the development code to reflect these improvements this has been a cultural change so we've worked very hard we've got new leadership within the department we've got new leadership at the city and ultimately we're doing this with professional support we've had the safe safe built consultants come in as well as CGA and clarion and ultimately using the professional services of the reports as well as services of those agencies it's been very useful for us it's helped us to reevaluate what we do and how we do it to look at the barrier within the city the barriers that that really are an artificial barrier but ultimately it's the way we've been doing business we've worked very hard at building trust our staff has been you know ultimately defeated and I think that they felt as if you know they've been used as a scapegoat I 'm staying here to take worse I'm standing here and I will take responsibility for staff's actions we're working very hard to build trust and the confidence in our staff to be able to do their job effectively and be able to provide a decision to our constituents we're focusing on training for function rather than tasks part of the organizational change in the in the structure was that we compartmentalize the work that was being performed and people would do that small area which they may be the subject matter expert without understanding the purpose behind the whole so we're focusing on the functions of the department and the divisions rather than being task-oriented we're empowering staff to make decisions at the lowest level possible we have to we have to make sure that we have the right people at the table having the dialogue having the conversation and being able to make decisions and we have to support those decisions and it goes back to training staff and making sure that staff understand the job that they're doing what what it is that they need to provide to our to our customers and to provide that we have taken steps in several different divisions to eliminate resubmittals what has been a common problem for our development community is that we ask for different items on plans when we ask for those items we're asking for resubmittal rather than ultimately drawing on the plans indicating on the plans what it is that is presented cannot be performed so rather than having a resubmittal along with another meeting that we actually put a strike through on the plans indicate what that that correction that's required and then we can release the plans as a conditional approval and it's been very effective we're providing the the resources that that are ultimately our clients customers stakeholders need and our employees included so those resources to make everyone more effective and efficient and ultimately save time energy and money what we've done to date we've we've reorganized processes we have changed the pre- development site plan the development review processes we've reduced the requirement for some of the meetings that we have as well as some of the applications that exist we've done a lot of this through really just challenging what the status quo was and that is asking why it is that we're doing what we're doing we're attempting to rewrite processes when we rewrite those processes we're asking each step along the way why is it that you're doing this staff challenging theirself as to why they're doing what they're doing and ultimately by challenging that why whether or not we're actually necessary to do these things question councilmember husband sir so thank you so with these changes are we changing the floor plan plan in the office per se so that it matches kind of the flow of the different departments and then I guess my other question would be are we centralizing that almost like a concierge approach where one person can be a point of contact that would then go run down these other loose ends so that the individual doesn't have to follow up with with different people absolutely we are we have and we will be so and I and I say that we are dubbing this the one-stop-shop so it is it should be the portal the portal for for anyone that comes to the city of Denton to do any work we don't expect them to go anywhere else and that takes some changes through a number of departments ie our accounting and billing so we're working through that we absolutely are going to reconfigure seats so we're gonna we're gonna move the appropriate bodies I haven't I have an office on the first floor I really don't need to have an office on the first floor I need I need those staff persons that are going to engage our customers the most on the first floor so that's who's going to be there we're going to realign where it is that our customer service counter we're going to bump that out a little bit we're going to we're going to add a couple more staff in that area or relocate so you are absolutely correct to the point that we're going to match what our processes is and we're going to be able to provide the service delivery to match that so we we are in the midst of doing that we're we've taken some of those actions and we are going to continue on that path and expect to have that done before the first of the year if I may request a in a perfect world when it's all when the dust is settled a graphic or flow that gives me an idea so for example a builder walks in the building and what happens you know just and it could be just squares with with titles they go see you know the receiving receptionist whatever that is just I'd like to visualize where we're going if that's I mean and I 'm not saying today I'm just saying if that can be put together I'd appreciate it because it would help me evaluate that process absent going through it myself absolutely can provide we can provide that I will say it's a very complicated business and it is not one size fits all so it depends on what the process is that someone's coming in for and it's really easy to put that into one box and say this is how this works but we're going to we're really going to create that feel that it is so you're going to come to the front counter and it will not matter if you're coming there for the fire department if you're coming there for planning if you're coming there for building inspection you will not know the difference someone at that counter will be able to serve your needs with a very few with very few application forms and and then if they're needing to speak to a subject matter expert that subject matter expert will come to them rather than us sending them somewhere else so we will simplify that and absolutely I'll be certain to get Todd some graphics that will represent how that's going to flow thank you customer breaks you have question on the staff training can you go into that a little more will that be in-house will that be further education will that be individual group how does that how's that going to work I'm going to get to some of that but I'll but I'll absolutely I'll just jump into that piece we're taking an approach of a multifaceted approach so we have an LMS system learning management system that we have that provides some very basic training so we're going we're building a strong foundation so we're going to start at ground zero and we're going to teach customer service we're going to teach local government 101 we're going to teach ethics sexual harassment diversity we're going right to the base and then we're going to work into Microsoft Word and office and and all of those foundational pieces as well as all the while helping them with their areas of expertise so if they're building inspector they're going to have some very specifically aligned courses to to their technical competencies and then so on and so forth through each of the divisions and the entire department individual development plans are going to be an important part of the work that we do and how we do it our staff it's very common in most any municipality or any municipality that I've been involved in we hire staff and we make the assumption that they know what it is that they need to do and I think that that has been probably one of the just to kill these heels for the department as a whole is that we've put people into positions and we assume that they have all the skills or resources that they need to do their job and and I find that that's not necessarily true so if we can just back up and and take the time to invest in them it'll pay dividends to our customers any other questions well thank you so much for the presentation I know this has been one of the areas in what oh I'm sorry oh I'm sorry you can kick me off here okay I don't have any problem with it yeah we're doing fine on time I apologize everybody's growing beards like you know look over here guys your own beers I can speed it along some other things that we've done is ultimately the city engineer which he snuck away on us is is really he's offic ing in our building two days a week that hasn't happened to the past so what what has happened for our developers is they'll come in for a meeting they'll sit down with staff staff will be able to ask questions but not really provide the answers so Todd has had a diverse set of experiences he's been an excellent partner for me and we're working through making some of the very same changes in the very same fashion and you know it's it's nice to be working in unison so it's helped to eliminate the silos of not talking about you again in a single point of entry and communication for all of our developers what we're doing is we're assigning a project manager and that project manager whether it's a private project or if it's a public project there'll be a single point of contact for developers they'll within two days within 48 hours they'll be receiving communication from city staff they will give them an email address a phone number and an understanding of what the expectations are so what is it that they think that they're going to to expect to receive ie that that site plan will be reviewed within three days ten days they will expect to get all of their comments back and if they have any questions that's where that they reference those questions with that being said we're also going to just on a on a conceptual plan or on a preliminary site plan where someone is going to submit a drawing to say that this is what I'd like to do rather than them having to upload that into project docs which is confusing and complicated we're just going to go to a simple email system we're gonna we're gonna have them email a PDF we'll route it accordingly so that all of our staff have the ability to look at it make comments and then prior to having that pre-development meeting we'll be knowledgeable and again just make it a little easier for our customers to be able to do that Todd our city engineer has eliminated the requirement for indicating material specifications on the plan so we'll reject construction documents because it has too many it doesn't have the necessary details spelling out the type of valve and in all of these components which aren't necessary if they're building to our criteria manuals or our design standards that's all we need to know we can inspect it in the field we don't need to necessarily reject or ask for a resubmittal and have another meeting on a set of plans and also along with that is that we're researching best practices in order to do that we've reached out to 27 other municipalities and we've asked them to share a very comprehensive survey and we're asking for a number of staffing the way that they do reviews what meetings they have their notifications process the entire the entire gambit of development services so we can get a great understanding of what others are doing and ultimately if we can steal from them we will I know the city attorney doesn 't like that word councilmember Gregory has a question thank you on your third bullet point about assessment of a single project manager I don't know if you've noticed that there seems to be a pretty high rate of turnover in that department and so what I'm curious about is if you have a single project manager that's assigned and that project manager moves on in the middle of a project what happens how does how do you account for that I'm sure you have a plan in there well we'll we'll we'll document everything that happens if it's not written down it didn't happen in the state of Texas so we'll have all of the information on our side of the house but really all that is is to make sure that we have an individual that is that primary point of contact if for some reason we were to lose someone which we're done in the business of losing people just for the record I will say we've got two former employees coming back already so we're going the other direction we've got positive momentum if that in fact were to happen we have that we have the people in place to be able to accommodate that so it's not as if if that person's gone that we won't know exactly where that's at we're documenting all of what the correspondence is so the project manager part of their responsibilities are to keep really careful documentation of things that have been agreed to if there's a handshake on something or an out on something it's somehow documented absolutely and again if it's not written down in the state of Texas it didn't happen so we're going to document everything and and we're going to be certain that we know what what is where and how it's happening we've we've also you know done an awful lot of work to go back into what our project log looks like we've got some software solutions that don't seem to talk well to each other and again in all fairness to staff I don't know that they've necessarily received the proper training but I know that staff through the various divisions and departments don't necessarily utilize the software in the same fashion so we ultimately can lose projects in the software solution so we've we've pulled some of that data out we've got in an Excel spreadsheet where we can identify dates and completeness checks and some better tracking tools in order to just make sure where we're at how we're going and all the while we're developing SOPs so we 're we're going to institutionalize how it is that we're doing business and make sure it's clear and concise and that we have consistency across the divisions as well as other departments. Thanks. Councilmember Briggs. But you kind of touched on it a little bit what my question was on one of the actions improved technology was listed and and I see that we're using going to use regular email but I know this is council maybe a year couple years ago approved some software for developmental services and that may be what you were speaking of which is working or not working so just kind of wondering if you can talk about that. Yes I can't talk about a lot of the history but what it is that I know. The technology that we have in place today we have really three software solutions that we're using for the plan review plan submittal as well as the inspection and and dependent on we have multiple systems what we're going to do is we're evaluating those they all are outdated they're they're antiquated I believe that this council approved and I won't speak to the specifics. The council approved about $600,000 to implement a streamlined software system which has really been put on hold right now until Scott and his team can get through the analysis of what our processes look like you don't really want to invest in a software system until you know what processes you're trying to create or trying to service so he's in the middle of that right now as he's working through all these project enhancements. Thank you. Good okay so our next steps what how are we gonna do what we're doing we're evaluating our technology and I suspect because of the the date of the software which we have today really we're going to be going out for an RFP so our city manager exactly right that we don't want to go putting an RFP out if we don't know what our processes are how we're going to do what we're doing so once we line out our processes develop our SOPs and get our development code in place we'll be more aligned to to look at what's the best solution for us. Creation of a department mission vision and goals which are aligned to ultimately the cities and the councils and each of those will really go down to the individual employee so that strategic planning is a business plan it's a business plan for each division and each individual how it is going back to that function versus task so each employee understands how it is that they fit to the bigger piece as we roll this up to make sure that they understand how important the work is that they do and how it serves this council and ultimately the citizens and accountability I think that there has to be greater accountability with what's happening how it's happening and to make sure that our employees we invest in are doing the work that we need done. I know that we have made a focus on community input and it's going to be a greater part of the work that we do that will be by both reaching out and being a part of the organizations within the community as well as just a constant piece on unmeasurable so we'll we'll be surveying our customers to make sure the work that we're providing is what they expect and then garnering that feedback back to make sure if there's more work that needs to be performed that we do that. An important part of that is establishing continuous improvement as a core value that we no matter what we do if we go through the next several months and we come up with the best plans the best processes the best development code our world changes and we need to change with it and the best way for us to do that is our staff to to think in terms of continuous improvement. Another piece in this is our partnerships and our collaborations both internally and externally with the various stakeholders that we that we work with which is the development community the builders the realtors architects engineers etc and we want to we want to be a part of the community we want to be actively involved in the community and that's how we're going to best communicate what it is that we do and why we do it. Denton should be that that place that you want to build not the place that you do not want to build and how it is that we can most responsibly develop Denton is through that community education and that's through that outreach. When you might ask for us it 's begun we've we've taken literally hundreds of changes many of them would never be seen the actions that have been put into place and the things that we've done have already begun to save our customers time energy and money we've gotten some positive responses we feel good about what we're doing staff feel more empowered I think the attitudes are better working very hard to stabilize staff and for staff to feel comfortable in the job that they're doing and to know that they're supported in the work that they do. We've been very clear and you know very deliberate in our expectations of staff and what we expect them to do that they're they're expected to say no but when they say no they don't have to use the word no they have to explain why it is that they can't do what it is that they have to do and we have to support them in doing that all the while looking for solutions what what are the options and how can we move forward. I've already spoke to the fact of training and that we're using that as the basic foundation to build upon and we'll run from there. We've cut the review times we've eliminated minor site plans we've worked with conditional approvals and greater accountability and the work that we're performing our site plan application we've reduced what was an 11 page document to two pages the front is the checklist an application and then ultimately a process on how it is to do that. Proactively we're engaging our applicants to better facilitate review and what we what we mean by that is that we need to we need to be talking to them our staff has to feel comfortable in picking up the phone and having the dialogue that hey if we do this on this plan we can get this done we can have this pre-development meeting we can move forward so using some different vehicles rather than just relying on the software solution that we have to the past for them to pull their own comments is that we actually human ize this and pick up the phone and have that conversation. We are anticipated to be fully transformed by the next building season so it's a very aggressive endeavor we've got a lot of things to do we've got an engaged staff and and hopefully the support of council to do that which brings me to the net and development code. A couple questions. Yes. Councilmember Hussbuth and then councilmember Briggs. Thank you. To add to my request I think far too often we don't get the reports back of the successes or I'll say I don't and so I know there's great things happening in the department even amongst in the midst of the turnaround and so I would ask that there's some kind of regular feedback given to us so if I'm meeting with a citizen and they say this department's been arduous I can say well here's three success stories that have just happened last week to to to demonstrate those changes or so that I'm educated on those things and so I think that in conjunction with and maybe this is a little more down the road but I would hope it's not too far down the road testimonials from individuals that that that say I was bogged down and two weeks later we're breaking ground because you know so I think I think at that point we're having specific people in the community that that can also validate and and and speak for the the turnaround and so then again in the community I can say well call up Steve they had a similar situation and it was able to be resolved and we're doing great things and so I think that would be very helpful for me to again carry your message forward and and support you best I can in meetings and kind of tamp down anything that would say it's business as usual I can I need but I need specificity to do that absolutely love to you I there 's nothing better than celebrating staff successes so I would be delighted to do that the page back on the if you can turn back one site plan application reduced from 11 pages to to you that seems pretty drastic with were we just asking unnecessary information on that I mean can you that's pretty much what was going on yeah it and it gets a little more complicated rather than getting into too much too much of the weeds okay the reality for a site plan is is it should just give a good graphic interpretation of what's being built and what's what components are there we ultimately ended up with with 20 pages of plans which isn't a site plan so right it's scaling back and really just getting the bare bones what is it that we need so somebody can say yes let me engage the services of a professional engineer and an architect and then they can move forward so just making sure it is it's radical but it's like I say it's a transformation of the business that we've done and I think we've just kind of evolved into that it wasn't intentional and it's just a fresh it's a fresh look again I think that the homework that was done prior to me coming here is very useful to have consultants come in and look at and take a just a third-party objective view and then for myself to see and to have my own set of experiences to look at it and just challenge the why well I don't think you'll get many complaints I'm just just wanted to ask. Sure absolutely. The Denton Development Code so where are we at with it so Clar ion is the consultant group and you have an item on your agenda today looking at and you know to continue with Clarion and actually asking to spend more money well that would be my fault they've done a lot of work they've done a lot of good work it's taken far too long to do the work that's been done and that you know be that as it may they've completed module one and those draft zoning districts I think work well they've they've been prepared presented presented to the stakeholders and the public but when we started getting into the administrative components and the procedures that's where it is that it was really challenging for me they'd went through and re written reformatted our development code and there are so many conflicts and so many barriers to being able to be successful in the business of serving our customers that I said we need to take a fresh look at this so we've scheduled some meetings for next week Monday Tuesday and Wednesday we're engaging our designers architects developers and ultimately the public at large if this item is approved and just trying to seek greater public participation and transparency trying to make sure that the questions that were asked they did their original survey in 2013 in four years time a lot of things have changed because we do have new leadership both at the city level and within the department that we want to make certain that you know they're looking at that from from this perspective we're looking at the minimum statutory requirements just to make sure that if we start with a good foundation then we can build in the components that we do I know that for council it's a matter of notifying the public so we'll make those changes to state law or the minimum rule where it is that that this council asks for those things beyond that though we want to make sure that we're we're looking at our code as a is a new document and and starting fresh we have to have streamlined review processes and best practices included and and we can't do that by reformatting what we have we're gonna build this from how it is that we need to conduct business which those best practices dictate for us to do we're working to get rid of the specifications within the DDC we have done a lot of work on the criteria manuals the design manuals and ultimately that's where that needs to be contained so we'll we'll remove those from the DDC and we'll make reference to the appropriate manual as as required and then we're gonna focus on the process and procedures and including those quality standards that make Denton a great place to live meaning you know whether it's landscaping or buffering and the other components so it's the second from the bottom bullet point removal of specifications from DDC and instead referencing the design criterion manual we've been having some discussions in the council committee on the environment about trying to make it more likely for citizens residents to be able to have access to recycling pretty handy and that means that when new apartment complexes are built we need to make sure that there are rev etments not only to contain trash receptacles but also to retain to hold recycling containers so we've discussed that for a while and the staff response back has been well that's going to happen when we do the DDC is that does that need to be and that's a that's a policy state direction that we want to do sustainability and so does that need to go in the reference design criterion manual to say when you're when you're constructing new commercial or new multifamily or does it need to go in the DDC I look at and I think it's probably in in both places meaning that you're gonna have maybe the requirement that you provide on site recycling within the DDC but then when it gets to the specifications of what that might look like that would be in the specifications manual or criteria manual so we say if X amount of units then you'll provide this much space so the DDC is a higher level document and the design criterion manual is more specific absolutely absolutely so if somebody has to provide a water line through a development we know that they have to provide a water line we should be telling them the size of the water line of the DDC they have to go to the criteria manual based on units so it's those types of things so both I would that's helpful thank you very much okay um so we're getting close to this wrap up thankfully we are just trying to be business friendly we 're trying to support the community we're working to have a balance between common sense and code sense we've got a we've got a difficult job to do we have to make sure that we're building Denton responsibly but we also have to look at the code and make sure that the code works for for Denton and so it's that balance between common sense and code sense and and how we do that we have to provide an ease of access for our customers whether that's in person online or even using some other technology tools to reach out to people via texting we want to simplify the processes we want to make things as just user friendly and easy as we can I think we make processes complicated because we just end up getting bureaucratic and we can we can dumb a lot of that down just make it easier again save save time save energy and ultimately equates to saving money and then the use of technology technology is probably one of the biggest pieces that we can do and implement to help our customers be more successful in what they do it's back to slide the reform and I liked I liked that because you said that the purpose is to expedite safe responsible development within the city of Denton then the next point is listening to our customers constituents and numerous stakeholders tell me you've used customer a lot who is who is the customer of your department we have many you can't divine this is probably one of the more unique departments when you talk about a customer because we have we have customers that are internal employees here at the city we have customers that are other departments at the city we have customers that would be the citizens they have an expectation of how it is that we're going to develop Denton or what services we provide or how safe buildings are whether it's restaurants or fire so we have citizens professionals meaning design professionals engineers architects internal external those people that live work visit or play and Denton are our customers I don't know that there's anyone that is not a customer of our department quite honestly okay I'm pleased to hear that I'll tell you we all get as the policymakers we hear from lots of people and one of the things that we have certainly heard is that it we need to have an expedited program so that people are not losing money as unnecessarily as they're trying to to to do business in didn't and create new development but we also hear from folks who are stressing that we want responsible development meaning we want development that does not have unintended consequences for the folks downstream that that get flooded because there wasn't enough careful attention paid to those kinds of things so so understanding that the customer base is bigger than the developer Oh absolutely is a developer but that it's bigger than that so I like the statement safe responsible development expedited I think that's a very good concise purpose statement and I appreciate it thank you any other questions thank you so much it you've got quite an endeavor ahead of you and I appreciate your commitment to it we've been needing to do this for the last decade and I look forward to the progress and the impact that is going to make on our community so thank you Scott thank you all right I'm going to call the closed meetings and then we'll take a break I'll now convene the closed session at 3 58 p.m. we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under text government code section five five one point oh seven one deliberations regarding personnel matters under second under text government code section five five one point oh seven four welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 630 p.m. on November the 7th 2017 we'll start off on our agenda with the pledge of allegiance to the US and Texas flag and please stand with me if you're able thank you honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one nation. okay we have no proclamations or presentations for agenda item number two we'll move on to agenda item number three presentations from members of the public we are review for procedures for addressing the City Council we don't have that available so we'll move on to agenda item B1 which we don't have any regularly scheduled oh yes we do yes we do have some yes okay B1 is Jessica Luther regarding a report from the citizens monument committee is Jessica here oh I'm sorry thank you my name is Jessica Luther I'm a property owner in the city of Denton at 7400 North Locust Street Denton 76207 I'm sure most of you know the endurance of mr. Willie Hedsmith along with many other activists within the community who have actively opposed the Confederate monument in Denton over the last two decades I would hope that you all surely know by now that the elected officials of Denton County are not capable of resolving this controversial issue on their own I would like you to look here on August 4th 2015 the Commissioner's Court led by Judge Horn publicly denied the accounts of many residents from Denton who testified in regards to the fountains that they were segregated and weren't allowed to drink from them and and again the citizens of Denton are having to face alt-right protesters who are traveling here to Denton from outside of our county outside of our state outside of our city to incite racist elements within our town it's been said to me that it's not the city's job to tell the county how to do their job I agree and I understand that but I also know that the Denton County Commissioners just recently approved the formation of a committee comprised of Denton County residents to advise the county on determining the best resolution regarding the Confederate monument that sits in the center of our town in open court these Commissioners have stated that they encourage feedback from all Denton citizens on the issue as well the city of Denton has historically played an integral role in the development and approval of the Confederate monument as you can see on June 4th 1918 the Public Secretary of the United Daughters of Confederacy Monument Committee reported to the DRC that City Attorney HR Wilson accepted the monument on behalf of the city August 27th 1919 the Denton City Commission led by Mayor Henin ordered the connections made for water to supply water to segregated water fountains on the Confederate monument this was again confirmed by the DRC the next day and on September 8th 1919 the DRC reported that the water connections were made and the monument water did flow for whites only in Denton this is a crucial moment for the city of Denton including its elected officials the monument may be on county property but this doesn't mean that the city of Denton has no obligation to participate in a resolution on the issue it makes all Dentonites feel safe and included in the community to see their elected officials standing up for them it's only appropriate that the city of Denton's government play an equally relevant role in the discussion of the future of this controversial symbol as it did in the many conversations and actions that led to the erection of the monument in the center of town a century ago there's a great deal of newly discovered historical evidence which directly connects Denton's Confederate monument and those behind its erection with the removal of Quaker town residents in the 1920s this research has been submitted to the county with minimal acknowledgement or dissemination on their behalf I ask that any of you with the power to do so coordinate with me at your soonest convenience and allow me to present you with this information I will ask that you review it and share it publicly based on its merits and let the citizens of Denton know the truth in addition I ask that you use any authority available to allow me and other researchers access to city records which would offer more insight I ask that you investigate the Confederate monuments noticeable and disturbing lean which has been reported to the city county and state by multiple citizens as a safety concern open records request show that the county has not looked into it in spite its public statements that it has open records request show finally I'd like to ask each and every one of you that you just participate this is in our city and there are citizens being bullied in county courts right now because people don't like what the citizens have to say I appreciate any and all efforts you might take to support participation thank you the next speaker is mr. Robert Don nelly regarding the issues of SUP compliance mr. Donnelly state your name and address and your time will begin my name is Robert Donnelly I live at 3900 Quail Creek Road Denton Texas I'm here about the solid waste SUP 204 what you see before you was part of the original application the highlighted part basically says the application shall be accompanied by a site plan which along with the application will become part of the specific use permit so therefore the site plan is part of the SUP wrong way this is the site plan off to the right you will see the buffers this is page one of two and this is page two of two this is the important thing this is the diagram of what the buffer is supposed to look like whether it be a hundred feet wide or 115 feet that's the way it's supposed to be landscaped this is from the PNZ meeting the hot the top highlighted said that the trees will be two-inch caliber for canopy trees and an inch and a half for understory the second part says which kind of confirms that diagram I showed you which is very important the trees are going to be placed per design to match the density and then the bottom part because if you remember the letter they said they planted them but they died mr. Yost also says he was asked would they replace the trees yes it would be a requirement of the SUP and the city would be required to maintain those trees and to replace them if they died this is old Edwards Road this is buffer 2 that diagram is supposed to be in there and even though this looks like there's trees there that's actually the right of way for Edwards Road the buffer is behind the wall if you can see in the middle of that wall that piece of yellow sticking up that is a TCEQ marker that marks the buffer zone and it's behind the wall so in all these pictures if you'll notice here there is nothing behind the wall those old oak trees are not behind the wall there on this side there are trees about a thousand fifteen hundred feet down on behind there but as you see with all these there's no trees behind the wall so there's basically no trees in the buffer and this is your Mayhill Road buffer that's buffer number one because the buffer starts at the wall to the right of this picture that black line is the wr ought iron fence it's on top of the road and when you drive down Mayhill you think you're looking at the buffer you're looking at the very start of the 115 foot buffer most of it is behind that wall and this is a picture looking south behind that wall the buffer ends to the left of that dirt road a few feet I'm not sure how many feet but that now remember that diagram of all the pretty trees that were voted on and that's what we were going to get that is the buffer on Mayhill Road as far as Edwards Road there also is no irrigation and it is also required in the site plan that there be adequate irrigation so my question to you is it doesn't seem to leave much doubt that you're not in compliance with the SUP so my question for you that I would like to know and I'm sure the city of Denton the people want to know is are y'all going to enforce the SUP or not do you just pass the rules and then you don't follow up on them or do are y'all exempt from them we'd just like to know I'd like an answer please question from councilmember Briggs I would like to know the same thing as far as like looking at this picture here we're supposed to be seeing trees you're supposed to be saying trees planted like that diagram that was part of the SUP that was presented to council when they approve this you pay so all along the landfill on on the streets Mayhill Edwards Mayhill and Edwards is all that's in the SUP okay and to have the SUP those requirements are supposed to be fulfilled correct they are part of the SUP so question to staff do we know how many trees have died since we've planted and if we could get the information I'm just curious we brief council we have also engaged Friesen Nichols landscape architects to help us re reforest this particular area so that's being worked on at this point and our intention is to comply okay we already have the landscape plan done for it you did that in 2000 I have a copy of it out there if you'd like to see it so you've got all the things you just not doing it is the bottom line all right any other questions thank you thank you appreciate all right next speaker will be our open mic we have two the first one is Kathy Lusgarten let's yes that correct yes state your name and address and your time will begin old-school paper my name is dr. Katherine Lusgarten I live at 11809 Sutherland 76 207 Will Rogers once said that when you find yourself in a hole the thing to do next is stop digging the hole that Denton finds itself in right now is related to the Denton Energy DEC the fiasco that f iasco is not the fault of this City Council I know that and most folks also know that but this City Council is the one that can stop the digging and by that I mean halt the construction we now know that the DEC is not needed to achieve a hundred percent sustainability for Denton not even 70% we now know that most or all of the power generated by the DEC would go somewhere else it doesn 't even benefit Denton but all the air pollution from that power plant stays right here great benefit for us the DEC also will generate very little or maybe even no profit to Denton how does that pay for the plant so whether the plant is built or not built we're out that money forever so Denton takes all the risk with hardly any tangible benefit the citizens are also wondering is there any criminal misconduct involved in this and we'd like that investigated so again when you find yourself in a hole the thing is to stop digging and we have to do it now while we still have control over our own destiny once that plant is completed ERCOT controls it not us we have no more say in what happens with it so I know the objection from some is going to be well we've already spent so much money on it yeah but you don't throw good money after bad we're going to lose that money anyway so when you factor in when you when you review the the expense factors of discontinuing this construction project also consider the impact that the added air pollution has on our citizens we're adding air pollution to air that already fails to meet federal clean air standards what are the direct health impacts to citizens who are affected by the air pollution what are the indirect health impacts days of work lost days out of school what's the cost to Denton's reputation when the air pollution is increasing instead of decreasing how our businesses and employees and their employees who are considering a move to Denton going to view that situation so get us out of the hole stop digging stop construction on this plant do it through a court injunction if you have to so that you've got whatever time you need to explore all the options to get us out of this bad deal thank you so much thank you next speaker will be Jan Piper Lunt come down to state your name and address your time will begin hi I'm Jane Piper Lunt and I live at 42 11 interstate 35 I 'm here to address the bulldozing of the tent city which I find absolutely inhum ane but I know you guys have had a long day of workshops and then this meeting tonight and your first thought is going to be I can't wait to get home and I'm glad and when you get there I want you to know you need to sign in and you can't have any pets and no alcoholic beverages and certainly no drugs and if this meeting runs late after 10 o'clock the doors locked you can't go in sorry you need to be up by 6 and take everything you own with you and you can't come back until 6 and it is especially if you are sick or in a wheelchair or and if you have an argument with your spouse you have to leave oh and on decent nights you only get to stay there three days a week if you want something without these restrictions I'll put you on a list okay and but the problem is there's 3,000 people on that list right now and so it may be a while before we can get you in any place you know if you are on the list you need to prove that you don't have any emotional or mental or addictive problems and if you do you need to take our pills and you need to do it the way we tell you to or we can't house you we don't know how long you'll be able to stay as long as there's funding or you behave yourself you know in the meantime I'm sure you'll figure something out you know you can shower over at Dina or and you can have one meal a day over at our daily bread you know but you'll be fine there's a quote from a book called tent city urbanism and it says the tent city community provides a unique opportunity and that it allows those experienced homelessness to invest value in space and to create a place one's own and reestablish sense of ownership and responsibility that can better position those trying to reintegrate themselves into society about a month ago I started a Facebook page to encourage the city and to find supporters to start a sanctioned tent city this is being done all over the United States it's successful it's inexpensive the city has 520 pieces of property that we own we can certainly find some place to put these people again I ordered the book tent city urbanism I will give you all copies when they come in it you will be amazed you the people that have these programs are so proud and I got 21 seconds in a good minute they're not any more problem than apartment complexes and they're certainly cheaper we have great organizations doing any stuff but it's slow we need something tonight it's cold out there so when you go to your car and that wind hits you you think about what you would do tonight if all you had a blanket all you had was a blanket and not sure when you're gonna sleep anyways we need to provide shelter for these people in a tent city would be a great solution so talk to me if you wanted to because I will be coming to you thank you appreciate that thank you all right move on to our consent agenda agenda item number four mayor pro tem I'll move for approval of the entire consent agenda items except for item oh okay councilmember Briggs I'll second all right we have an motion and a second for approval of all the consent agenda items save agenda item O which will be an item for individual consideration let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero well no we will now move on to agenda item O as an item for individual consideration a caption reads consider adoption of an ordinance accepting competitive proposals and awarding a contract for federal government relations and lobbying services for the city of Denton good evening mayor and City Council on the item before you tonight is a contract consideration or consideration of a contract for federal advocacy services so just by way of background the city of Denton has held a contract for federal and advocacy lobbying services since 2009 with a vendor called capital edge that agreement expired at the end of September of 2017 so we decided to go out for requests for proposals that RFP was released on September 14th with responses due back by October 5th we did send it to a long list of vendors over 54 vendors and we only received one response back and that was from our current vendor of capital edge capital edge provides advocacy services exclusively to local governments and their agencies they have held the pricing flat for the city of Denton with no increases since 2012 and that's pricing of fifty four thousand dollars per year with up to five thousand for reimbursable travel expenses the contract tonight for consideration is a one-year contract with two additional one-year extensions the scope of work that capital edge is proposing to provide and has provided in the past is to monitor federal legislation that may impact and work with our congressional delegation as well as the federal agencies to advance the city's interests and priorities they also provide timely information and research on federal actions not only on legislation but also on committee reports hearing testimony rules regulations and grant notices some of that can be very detailed and move very fast through the the committee processes so it's great to have their their thumb on top of it of what's happening in the federal government they also provide notice of potential funding opportunities and provide assistance in capturing that funding and I'll go through a couple examples in a second and they also act as a liaison for the city and work closely with our national local government organizations of the US Conference of May ors and National League of Cities so just by way of some further context over the past two years capital edge has worked with the City Council city staff and other agencies to accomplish these things are listed on the slide and I'll just go through a couple they've assisted with securing the Corps of Engineers commitment of funding for the repair of the Lake Louisville dam that funding the federal funding is in the budget for this year and the next federal fiscal year they've supported the preservation of the transportation alternatives program it's very important to the city we recently received a grant this summer of 1.5 million dollars for safe routes to school grant through this program they've also been fundamental in supporting the preservation of core local government grant programs as the federal government has tried to reduce these grant programs and reduce their budget further they've been a proactive advocate for us in making sure that those maintain and we can apply for those grant opportunities so a couple categories are listed there we've received grants to improve our airport we annually received CDBG grants we've received home grants to assist low-income individuals with home repairs public safety grants we received a fire department the fire department received a safer grant this year for a million dollars so that we could put a new medic ambulance into service and we've also received an emergency solutions grant or Denton County received an emergency solutions grant of six hundred thousand dollars per year for two years to address homelessness they also work close they've also worked closely with other agencies and to increase the sub allocation of federal highway funds the regional transportation Commission you can see we've increased our annual allocation for this area they've been fundamental in supporting the preservation of the FFA contract our program so what that means is the FFA funds the staffing for the air traffic controller tower at Denton Enterprise Airport that's an estimated cost of nine hundred thousand annually and that program has been attacked in the past to be removed and we would have to otherwise fund those costs for the air traffic control tower and then they've also been fundamental in protecting just local government authority overall preserving the tax exemption for municipal bond interests and protecting our right to manage our right ways in terms of charging fees for the use of the right away and that's going to be important through this next session as well last week there was a bill introduced by the house for tax reform and it included a provision to eliminate advanced refunding of municipal bonds the city often uses that tool to save taxpayers money saving almost two point nine million dollars over the last two years using advanced refunding so there they provide good services in terms of notifying us when these changes are proposed so that we can come up with the right communication to our federal delegation to advocate for the city's position and interests happy to take any questions you might have any questions customer breaks so on there when it says supported that means they go and they advocate to our federal delegation might be federal agencies as well they're also probably working closely with the US Conference of Mayors the National League of Cities the other sit Texas cities that might be advocating for something through the Texas Municipal League as well and they send us updates constantly correct we get weekly updates called the Washington report from them as well thanks mayor protein so do they actually meet with our representatives or with the staffers of the representatives on these issues we would have we meet with them it would be with city staff or city officials would be there with the congressional right I've been with them when we've met with our congressional delegation so it would be in that context correct correct they they work under the direction provided by City Council and the mayor okay I don't have any other questions but I do have a statement whenever we 're done okay any other questions statement down well I asked for this item to be pulled off of consent agenda so that we could have a vote on it and I appreciate council member headsmith for requesting a presentation because I think it helps put things in context just for some additional context the city during the last fiscal year spent two hundred thirty one thousand five hundred dollars on lobbyist services we had two Austin lobbyists which we now have one we had focused advocacy at the cost of a hundred thirty three thousand a year and solutions for local control at the cost of forty five thousand a year out of all three of our lobbyists contracts I would say that Ralph's group a capital edge provide the most value we get weekly reports from them whereas I can't remember the last time focus advocacy sent us anything and I think they provide a comprehensive overview and I like Ralph personally I've met with him a couple times that said as I understand it their clients in Texas are Denton Arlington and Dallas if I remember correctly Austin correct and Austin and Austin so that's kind of who their Texas group is and I would say we're a little bit of an outlier as far as Austin Dallas and maybe Ar lington we're kind of in that category I don't I don't think we actually need these services I think that NLC the National League of Cities covers a lot of what this particular firm covers for us in terms of keeping us apprised of for instance municipal bond interest issues etc if there are things behind the scenes that are happening whether it's with the FAA contract the TAPS program was surprising to me I was a part of the safe routes to school grant and I didn't recall any involvement from focused advocacy it might have been somewhere that I didn't see but I've tried to keep an open mind because I came into this with a bias against lobbyists but I still cannot find a way to justify using a thousand dollars a week of taxpayer money for a newsletter so I'm going to be voting no against this all right any other questions all right thank you councilmember Gregory thanks mayor I move approval of item 4 Oh Councilman Ryan I will second let's vote on the board please motion carries five to one all right we've that concludes our items for individual consideration we'll move I'm sorry our consent agenda items we'll move on now to our items for individual consideration first is 5a consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing a development agreement between the city of Denton and DW Carmel LLC we do have a card wishing to speak after staff presentation [Silence] he's coming down thank you there's one right here yeah [Silence] [Silence] well you know thank you Brian very sorry for the no problem good evening mayor and council I'm Jim Jenks with the city's engineering department bring here with Paul Williamson of our real estate department tonight to bring you a for your consideration approval a proposed agreement that would do two things basically it would facilitate the construction of the reconstruction of the remaining portion of Edwards Road west of Swisher Road intersection and also it would facilitate the transaction associated with a park dedication at the southwest corner of the Edwards and Swisher intersection to show where we're talking about that this is in association with a private development single-family development called villages Carmel phase 5a and 5b and 5a is in the red on this display and 5b is in the orange those are both along the south side of Edwards and 5b about Swisher Road this is a more detailed view and actually this is a close-up so so again here is 5a here's 5 b and the parkland property is this this area right here which is actually part of the 5b subdivision basically in late 2015 the developer completed their construction plans got their final plat approved by PNZ got their construction plans approved entered into three-way development contracts and was nearing a point where they could start construction in January of 2016 TechStat notified us that in one week they would be closing the post oak road overpass at I-35 for an anticipated period of nine months so we looked at that and had a lot of concerns about the closure of Edwards Road while post oak would be closed basically this this subdivision being that it borders Edwards Road and Edwards is currently an unimproved perimeter street for the typical exaction policy they would have to rebuild their side of Edwards Road but that would involve the demolition of the existing road which is only about 20 feet wide and in poor condition kind of panning out a little bit you can see down here the bottom of this display is the post oak bridge here would be the part of Edwards Road that would be closed so we had a lot of concerns about throttling of traffic access to and from this area especially the preserved Pecan Creek area to the east of here there'd be high traffic volumes on roads like Pokras Page and through some roads that are intended to be more residential also that would hinder our city's ability to quickly access these areas in terms of emergency services so basically we told the developer that the city would not allow Edwards Road to be closed while the post oak bridge is closed we in an effort to work with them help them advance their project we said you can go ahead and build your subdivision itself and really it's the same developer I should say for phases 5a and 5b and 5b there was plans where those plans got actually approved the plaque got approved or in early 2016 so they kind of came after 5a we said you can build your subdivisions however we will not file the plat for 5b ie you will not be able to get building permits for phase 5b until you're under contract for Edwards Road reconstruction in front of 5a and in front of 5b basically all the way from where it was recently improved by an earlier phase of villages of Carmel about 1700 feet east ward all the way to Swisher so they modified their development contract for 5a to take out that part of Edwards and late last year they they submitted to us and we reviewed and approved construction plans for the this whole 1700 foot section as a separate project they subsequently bid their project and the construction bids they got back including the low bid were much higher in terms of a per foot cost than what they had received only a year earlier for phase 5 a quite a bit higher basically the low bid for this this stretch was going to be six hundred and forty three thousand dollars they came to us and they said we had this kind of unanticipated kind of unusual encumbrance of the the post oak bridge being closed and having to pull back re-bid all this work now for whatever reason the the construction cost the per foot cost is much higher than before is there any way that you the city can can work with us given these issues we looked at it internally and the first basically first of all we know Edwards Road has to be rebuilt that section of road it's the last bit there west of Edwards or west of Swisher that has not been done again it's only about 20 feet wide it's in poor shape we know it has to be rebuilt and so with that in mind we thought what would it cost for us to do it in-house we have crews and expertise and experience with road rebuilding work so our streets manager took a very detailed look at the plans did an estimate for what it cost to do the road the eight foot sidewalk along the road the ready to change improvements and he figured he with a with a contingency factor included in his price he figured he could do it we could do it for about four hundred seventy five thousand dollars so it's a lot less than the bids that the developer got so we talked with the developer and basically sought a way to enter into a sort of a public-private partnership with them and what we've had a long negotiation that's gone on throughout this year but basically where we've sort of settled in principle and is per the terms of the agreement before you tonight is that we said if they would provide us if they would cut us a check up front for four hundred thousand dollars we would build the road the way it's supposed to be the full 25 foot section as we would normally require along with the eight foot sidewalk along this whole stretch we would build the road and fund any overages above that four hundred thousand dollar amount I should say we already have per the 2014 bond there is already there is sixty five thousand dollars budgeted still in the budget for Edwards Road improvements and we still have a much larger pot to draw from as far as miscellaneous street improvements I'm going to go through some more slides here very quickly I'm almost done but basically here is Edwards Road today the section we're talking about this is looking east near the Swisher Road intersection this is looking the other direction looking west going further west and you can see there's barely enough room for two cars to pass each other it's unstriped it's in the pavement is in poor condition there's no shoulder to speak of you see that again with this view this is a cross-section so what is basically what is proposed is what you see in hatched here this is asphalt over the lime stabilized subgrade we 'll go a little bit more than half of the ultimate section and this is per our standards the ultimate section is 45 foot wide back to back or back to have curb to back of curb when the other side the north side of the road when that property develops the completion of that road will be exacted from that developer so and down here at the bottom is what this would be the striping detail so you 'd have an 11 foot wide lane in each direction with a curb on the south side and a small shoulder on the north side on this particular slide this is looking east this is from the phase 2c which was recently completed kind of in the distance you can see this existing unimproved portion of Edwards Road and then more in the foreground kind of stopping at this construction entrance here is the recently reconstructed portion that's what this project would look like and what it would continue on to Swisher Road you see it's it's wider it has the concrete curb on the south side also has a foot wide sidewalk on the south side this is a little bit further west this is where there's development that's already occurred on both sides of the road timber links apartment is on the north side this is the ultimate section so when the north side further east of here develops they will add on to what this project would involve with another 20 feet of pavement to the north and sidewalk and you would have this section you can see this is wide enough to accommodate a turn lane if that was deemed necessary so to wrap up my portion the developer in this case faced an unexpected challenge with the closing of Post Oak Road at I-35 when they rebid their the work they were going to do in front of 5a plus the continuation of Edwards to all the way to Swisher the bids they received back were much higher price than there than a year prior we have determined that a $400 payment from the developer upfront would be an equitable exaction in this case for their perimeter paving requirement we would perform that paving project we've estimated we can do it for $475,000 including conting ency and we already have funds available for that this development agreement before you is what we see is the most timely solution to get this last bit of Edwards Road updated for the traveling public that is basically one other item that Paul Williamson will now speak to is that this agreement provides for a near-term closing and funding event for this contemplated park tract purchase again that's near the south that's at the southwest corner of Sw isher and Edwards thank you Paul will speak now and we'll both stand for questions actually mayor members of the council we did we are currently in contract for the purchase of that part the park tract at the southwest corner there and it's a it's a function of these of the street these paving improvements until they are committed to be put in we we're not going to be able to close the closing dates a function of that so if this is approved we'll be able to close on this property thank you mayor Pro Tem question for either of you is there some specific reason why the actual cost of the project is not being charged to the developer before the $400,000 amount is sort of an extrapolation of the per foot price that they had for their their 5a amount it's actually just slightly less it's it's actually the developer approached us and said you've got also you've got a new roadway impact fee ordinance can we just pay the roadway impact fees we said well roadway impact fee ordinance or not just in this this case still calls for perimeter street improvements this would actually this $400 ,000 amount is actually more than the roadway impact fee would be if in theory we were to I mean that's not really related to the cost of the road though itself right right okay it was basically something we've been negotiating throughout the year right and that was I believe basically that was we've talked to them about the $475,000 number and this was sort of the point that we've reached that was amenable to both parties so here's my concern when the city acts as a contractor for whatever whatever it is we act as contractors for a lot of things if we were to pave this road for the landfill or for some other entity that we own we would be charging that particular department exactly what it costs to build out the road and design engineering etc I would like to think that when we contract out you know when we act as a contractor for third parties that we're getting a fair deal and I'm not sure that we are I understand the negotiation process but I can't support something that's not the actual cost 400,000 seems like a good down payment with a true up at the end of the agreement to cover whatever happens later that's what I would be in favor of yes I appreciate you the points you raise and I gave believe it or not that was sort of a truncated presentation that I gave from the from the written report there was that you've been provided one other factor at play I think it's sort of a lesser factor but still a factor is that the developer did request to come back and pave this portion of Edwards with concrete rather than asphalt they said that being that they had a concrete batch plant on site that their subduing subduation already they could actually do that a bit cheaper so we looked at that we talked about that with our street department and basically the thought was we didn't want to do that for two reasons one the existing Edwards that we're matching to from the West is already asphalt and then with concrete we'd be talking about a couple weeks of cure time as opposed to a couple hours really for asphalt and we want to we wanted to minimize that cure time as well so that was sort of another hardship if you will the developer pointed to and played into the negotiation process okay any other there's a significant amount of right-of-way exaction that's occurring on this basis especially 5b the whole entirety of post oak road right-of- ways is also an exaction as part of this development so if you look at the overall right-of-way dedication that's occurring through this development it is somewhat significant compared to the size of the development itself so there's a there's an element of that in this as well of this negotiated agreement okay I guess because I know when developments come in for planning or something they have to dedicate right-of-way so let's just assume for the sake of discussion that the road issue and construction and cost is this isn't part of it it's the developers going to do it they're gonna do it whatever cost it is would we still be getting that exaction of right-of-way based upon the development of the property according to just our normal subdivision rules and regs yes so that's really not I mean you can't really include that in the value of what we may be receiving because we'd be getting that anyway is that is that what my understanding is well in the analysis kind of like the reasonable reasonableness of this dollar amount the four hundred thousand dollars when you when you do the calculations and you and you just work for that reasonableness is this a reasonable dollar amount the the right-of-way is a factor of that as far as about you know balancing that okay so I might have missed it I'm sorry I had to step out but what is it what is the city estimate is the total cost of this road that we're that we negotiated for what's it going to cost the city four hundred seventy five thousand dollars is our estimate so we 're only talking about seventy five thousand dollar difference as far as the actual cost I think it could pursue it to mayor pro tem's question of and and their bid was how much the low bid they got was six hundred and forty three thousand what was the high bid do we know I don't I don't know yes okay and all right thank you any other questions councilmember Greeks just for clarification the sidewalks are going to go on both sides or just the one side as part of this project just their side just their side all the way down right all the way down to to Swisher when the north side develops and the rest of that road section is built there'll be an eight foot sidewalk built along that in the future as well but for this project just the south side okay this has been done recently on the other phases of the subdivision but having a sidewalk on that side would be a really big improvement right now since there's not in that space thank you so wanna go ahead I'd like to if I could add just one more thing and I 'm really mom I'm kind of centric to the park track because we'd like to certainly book that as a as a park track the you know we the negotiating terms for that for the sale that park track was really on raw land dollars and and but we're purchasing as a platted lot with perimeter paving improvement so they're there we consider that to be a value enhancement for booking that asset is it 's already platted we don't we have no planning cost associated with that piece of land what would that usually run I could think it just the planning alone it could be I mean I'll ask a planner but I mean it could be several thousand I mean sure maybe ten thousand yeah I do tell me a little bit more about because I didn't quite follow it on the concrete so now the the if you'll go back up to this is you said that when the developer comes in and develops the other side of the road that we're not doing who owns that side of the road is it the same developer or somebody different okay but you're saying that the developer had said they could pour concrete where we're wanting to put asphalt for cheaper than the 475 is it well cheaper not necessarily cheaper than the 435 but cheaper than the 643 thousand because obviously these roads will be eventually dedicated to us I mean no matter who builds it and concrete has a useful life of what is compared to asphalt sort of depends on the design I will say this is a pretty stout asphalt design it's nine inches of asphalt over six inches of lime stabilized compacted subgrade so what's the what's the life of it ballpark I would say probably we got somebody coming down to answer that question I'm just trying to see because to me concrete is I mean you can get concrete streets you're doing well and I think some of it with the street manager is the fact that it's all asphalt out there now just continuity no I understand yeah yes city engineer Todd asked us as far as asphalt goes as long as we do the routine maintenance you can expect to get 20 to 25 years or longer but it does require constant maintenance on a recurring basis concrete does as well it's just a different kind of maintenance you would expect to get about a 30-year lifespan out of concrete either way you should get similar lifespans it's just the type of maintenance we have to do long term which one's more expensive that really does very depending on how the market set up because I know I know okay thank you appreciate it I'll put it this way if you repair concrete the way you're supposed to repair concrete when you need to maintain it concrete is more expensive to repair you should theoretically have less maintenance to do over the lifespan of the concrete than you should asphalt but asphalt definitely is cheaper to repair sure okay thank you okay councilmember you have another question right what just after that conversation so they did the developers did say that they would build that street in concrete is that can we can we they were willing to they requested it we conferred with our streets department and ultimately determined that in this particular situation where we were talking about the closure of a busy road that and again matching in the section that exists to be to the West that in this case asphalt would be preferable again this this being a pretty thick asphalt design thank you thank you appreciate it thank you for your help we do have a card wishing to speak mr. Willie husband all right those are all the cards we have wishing to speak chair would entertain discussion action council member Gregory thank you mayor I move approval of item 5a all right let me say this before there's nobody who's chimed in a second or yet so I with the price difference of seventy five thousand and understand about the right of way and all that I think I would also share the same Senate as mayor pro tem I mean if already there's a hundred and four six hundred thirty two thousand I think is what the low bid was or six hundred six hundred forty three there's already a savings there of over a close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars I'm sort of an agreement that I think that to step up and pay that extra seventy five thousand you could reverse it with the city and say well why in the city just go ahead that's not that much money we're responsible to everybody sitting in this room who's paying property taxes in the city then which this development will to as well there's no question about that so I'm going to have difficulty supporting this at the contracted level of four hundred thousand dollars I would just assume see that and so I don't have any problem with us doing it don't have any problem with how it's done the developers obvious done a good job out there and will continue to do a good job and but this is saving money and it's still saving considerable money so and the right away we would have had to have acquired that would have been dedicated to us anyway not withstanding who built the road at what cost so and the platting costs for the park if we got you know that's that could be ten thousand dollars sure so I take that in consideration but also still see that number one I don't know how we're doing it for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars less than somebody who put a bit in on it but that's a different story I guess that's just a different profit margin so those are my thoughts on I wanted to share that before we before we got into the other discussion so we have a motion do I have a second for this for this particular motion I will call for a second one more time and if by the time I quit talking there is none then the motion will die for a lack of second and so therefore the motion dies for a lack of second so a chair would entertain any other kind of action that would be desired on this particular agenda item councilmember Begarry I'd like to move to amend this trying to think of the best way to amend it so people have ideas please let me know but my thought is that the amendment would be to approve this item with the addition of a true-up provision following the completion of the paving and a complete itemization of costs so if there was it could be an additional 75 it could be less could be a little bit more but that would be my my amendment is for a true-up at the end is there mr. city attorney tell me if I'm out of line as far as process Robert's rules of order because obviously this is an amendment to a negotiated kind of agreement between the developer in the city and I would like at least to give the opportunity if there's someone here representing the developer to have the opportunity to speak to this if there is someone who is is able to do that if it is council okay with that to see if because I you know I don't want to approve an amendment if somebody's not going to be able to agree to it so yes sir if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin mayor and council members my name is Rob Zilke I'm with ZPS engineers at 1111 Main Street in Grapevine Texas I've been involved with this project in this negotiation since 2014 or earlier and I feel like there were quite a few things that were not fully discussed or represented here this evening I apologize for coming up here at this late point I didn't know if I was available to speak or not but I'm not sure where to begin well I guess the the question really posed to you is is there I mean and you could talk about a lot of things from your perspective that would give rise to the reasonableness and rationality of the $400,000 my question simply is given that there's a motion on the table for it the prove-up the true up based upon true cost is that something that if we pass today that the applicant is not willing to consider and if that's a question you can't answer right now I understand that yeah I mean I can't speak on behalf of the owner I know one thing they did offer was just to go ahead and pay the impact fees which the ordinance was passed in the middle of this project and you know just not do the proportionality participation that was originally assessed you know that ordinance was passed during them their middle of this and kind of imposed retroactively so that was part of what this negotiation was trying to account for but we could certainly just go and pay the impact fees according to the new ordinance and then leave the and still donate the right away still sell the park at the discounted rate still accomplish the whole deal but just go ahead and pay the impact fees and let the city build the street I think that comes out pretty close I'm not sure but that is the new ordinance and that is the new requirement so if we're gonna follow the new ordinance what we'll do that this was an attempt to negotiate something in between okay all right okay thank you I appreciate that thank you you know obviously there seems to be a lack of desire on counsel for the amendment as it's been negotiated I wonder if maybe if we had some time based upon the discussion here today to go back and reimplement some discussion to see if we can come to something that more of course we only have a motion there's no second I haven't got a second yet on this particular motion so I'm gonna wait until we see if we get a second so we have not got a second yet on the motion if they haven't gotten one by the time I quit speaking we will die for a lack of a second I'm just trying to give people fair warning can you repeat the motion please councilmember Gary sure mayor pro tem could you sure yeah it's a motion to approve item a with an amendment added that there will be a true up at the end of the paving with actual costs the difference in actual costs to be paid by the developer and the other item was to we haven't gotten to that other item yet which was to go back and re negotiate with that okay yeah the motion on the table is approval based upon the current motion is to approve with the amendments okay which I'm more inclined to see if we can't work something out based at least upon the the sentiment shared here tonight on see if we can't come to an agreement on something along those lines get some information on the impact because I don't know if impact fees really apply here because the ordinance was passed in the middle of this discussion so we'd have to go back and have legal take a look at that as well okay I think the motion is going to die for a lack of a second so any other particular type of motion someone would like to put forth city attorney mr. yeah just building on what the mayor pro tem had said there's nothing that prevents this council or any member from making a motion and the second thing to postpone this to a date certain to allow the suggestion that mayor pro tem a made to be negotiated by staff with a developer or some other type of negotiations you know as mayor pointed out this is an actual contract that's been entered into between the city or a proposed contract to be entered into between the city and the developer so there's some negotiation that takes part the representative from the developer does not have any authority to do that tonight so my recommendation for for this council would be to postpone to a date certain to allow further negotiations along the lines whatever you may want wish for us to do and bring this back at a later date okay councilmember Husspeth yes that was going to be my motion that we postponed to a date certain of November 21st that oh I'm sorry is there it do we have a meeting on the or is that got it December 5th is the next one I believe got it yeah yeah so I move postpone to the December 5th that date certain all right okay councilmember Gregory would it be I don't have a problem with the fifth but I'm wondering if it would be better to postpone to an event certain of the ability for them to bring back the contract because it may be able to be done by December the fifth and it might not all right so are you requesting a friendly amendment for the motion to reflect an event certain instead of a date certain councilmember Husspeth are you okay with that amendment if not that's that's fine no I'd rather keep it a static date so that we can you know I think that's okay three four weeks I think for that one issue to be resolved okay councilmember Briggs I will I will second all right we have a motion and second to postpone till date certain of December 5th instructing city staff and the developer to continue negotiations if we can't bring back something similar to the sentiments expressed here tonight on council at least by mayor pro tem let's vote on the board please motion carries 6-0 all right I'm going to move on to agenda item 5b consider approval of resolution authorizing the creation of a steering committee to guide the development of small area plan thank you mayor members council I'm city manager and staff this item is a resolution for your consideration to create a small area plan for the neighborhoods surrounding the university campus North Texas just way background for the viewing public this small your plan is shown here was approved for a contract by freeganese associates on August 1st 2017 the goal is to develop a small your plan and implementation strategy to address the following challenges which includes traffic parking and building compatibility as it relates to scale use and character small your plan again will be the plan document that will have the vision and recommended actions that come out of the small your plan study as part of the small your plan the steering committee is needed in order to guide the policy and build consensus with the planning process throughout the the public outreach process that is and these are the representation members that our consultants have suggested and as of the last meeting that we had in front of this council we asked that the council provide three nominations for the steering committee but that will be at another item coming up but for today or for this item it's just the consideration to create the steering committee and I conclude my presentation we have blue card wishing to speak mr. Willie husband speak state your name and address and your time will begin my name is way has with a little bit 623 Newton mayor and council I'm not sure which one this is there's a steering committee there's a small area plan committee this is not another name for that is it this is the steering committee for the same this steering committee for the small area plan yes sir okay yes the small area plan for over by University of North Texas that's the one okay I want to make sure first I talk my son has told me that he didn't want me to get up here again and say talk about something I didn't know what I was talking about I'm not I'm a boy I'm on unbop unabom bed him never mind that's enough anyway I'm really excited about this this plan in that area I remember when it first came up and I thought that's a large area my thought small area planning would be like fry Street or the historical section just one little small area that you look at and then figure out what's best for that area really excited about the scope of this one how large it is and and as I told the committee the the council back when that one was being discussed if it's done right then it would it could really improve what 's happening here in the city especially in that area or really in any area where you have people who are coming together and I hope with the objection of objective of working together and figuring out something that's good for the whole population of that that area very excited about that I hope that the committee is able to not have biases built in about areas or people or things or situations and have nothing to do with figuring out how to get the thing to work together so I think it's a real good idea and I look forward to seeing what comes out of that thank you next speaker is Deb Armentar state your name and address and your town begin Deb Armentar 2003 missy with Lane I too wanted to speak in support of this the small area plan it is such an important part of our city and it has been subject recently many different parts of this area to development proposals that have met with opposition by the people who live and work in this area in that area and various stakeholders that this this just seems to be absolutely what is needed I do want to say it's bit tersweet for me because we're missing Munal who really saw this this this plan into creation from its inception and it's it's sad to me that that she's she's not here and and I hope that that those who continue on and move forward with this program and keep maintain her just sense of clearheadedness and lack of conflict of interest and just her insistence on really getting to know who who this the stakeholders are like I said the people who live and work in these areas and have businesses and and own homes and rent homes and visit these places she really got to know the areas that she work with and I have no reason to doubt that this committee will do the same but it is sad that she 's no longer here and I will always think of her when I think of this this this plan and watch it grow so I'm very happy and thank you thank you any other questions councilman Ryan yes I've got a question for staff I'm not sure whether this is wrong or legal but the fact that in this area we already have a small area plan and you're stacking another one on top of that is that just a secondary overlay or so now when we if you change a zoning or you change a historic district or something else it's going to change so the smaller plan that's existing it's the fry so you don't smaller plan part of this effort will be to upgrade or update that smaller your plan so that will replace the existing smaller plan for the fry Street as far as an overlay that's the zoning that you're referring to that will be existing for the fry Street if the smaller plan has recommendations to you know remove it or change it that will come out of this more your plan that won't affect the existing overlay district so there's there's two there's a smaller plan and then that's just a guiding document and then you have an overlay district which is what's zoning and is a little bit more it's it's in the DEN development code okay so is the fry Street plan going to be reincorporated into this or totally right design will it go away and just become part of it will be incorporated into this small airplane and it will still exist as a fry Street area plan smaller part of this plan yes that's that's the is it part I guess where I'm going with it is it a separate small area plan within the larger small area plan no it will be just one smaller plan with that area incorporated into this plan okay okay anybody else just to comment I know when this was being created the small airplane itself I voted against it because I thought it was too big and I'm gonna go ahead and be consistent with that I think it's still too large so just based upon my principles on that I'll be voting against this I'll still be nominating three people but because of that's the requirement but if it passes so because member on yes I feel the same way one I feel it's too big and two that it wasn't until I just now realized or thought about the fact that we're going to be losing an existing small area plan by just kind of engulfing it into a larger one and I because of those two factors you're gonna be voting against it as well yeah it's clarification I'm not opposed to small area plans at all my position is not to the the concept of small area plans it's just for me it encompasses of wide variety of different uses and and different types of development along a wide swatch and I think the purpose of a small area plan is to really hone it down and try to find like-minded properties like-minded neighborhoods to do that so it's not an opposition to plans themselves it's just simply this particular one in its size mayor pro tem just a point of clarification we've already voted to create the small area plan so this would be a vote against the steering committee if I understand that correctly because this is voting strictly for the steering committee of the small area plan okay I just want to know I appreciate that yes just consistency yes thank you mayor pro tem. Councilmember Briggs. I move to approve. Mayor pro tem. Second. Alright let's vote on the board. Oh well never mind let me let me read both that I hit the wrong button yeah sorry about that that's never mind I'm not even gonna say it never mind don't say it councilmember. Do I have to? Yes no you're fine the motion and second still stands oh you have to go through it again. Mayor pro tem got me all sort of flustered on that challenge. Sorry about facts. Oh wow okay alright hmm that's good one. Fourteen. Motion carries fourteen. Glad we're having fun. Alright agenda item number C consider approval appointments to the small area plan steering committee. Thank You Mayor and members of council. Next slide if I can show it on the screen here is next steps now that we have a steering committee our next step is to hold our steering committee meetings along with our technical advisory committee meetings as well and following that up with some public open houses and open workshops. The schedule is roughly a year we started this effort back in September we hope to be done by next summer August to be relatively the time frame. For the item currently we have the following appointees or nominations these are individuals that the City Council nominated three each staff added three additional members and those are Dave Reynolds with UNT, James Davis with UNT and Jim Klein with DCTA. Outside of those three individuals the rest of the nominees or appointees were nominated by City Council members. I don't know if you want me to go through the list or if there's any questions. Okay yeah any questions? Yes Mayor Pro Tem. So was there no requirement for a minimum number of residents? No we didn't have a number we just asked that the representation be diverse and include residents as well. Yeah because I think there's only four residents. Aaron, Michelle, Paul, Casey, Randy, Randy and Daniel. Yeah some of them don't. And some of them may serve on her. Yeah it was just I'm just surprised that there aren't more residents on the list that's all. Mayor Pro Tem? Move for approval. Council member Briggs? I'll second. All right let's vote on the board please. Oh oh hold on we got some cards my fault. Thank you Mr. Husspeth. Mr. Husspeth sorry about that my fault. Yep I stand corrected I told you we're gonna be consistent and I just broke my own rule. That's right. I'll take full responsibility for that. I can tell you that. General Walters. Willie Husspeth I live at 623 Newton. I'm a resident I noticed my name wasn't called is there a message there that I need to take from that anyway? It surprises me Mayor, oh I'm not supposed to call anybody's name. It surprised me that someone would not see how this could be good. Now I'm not saying no you didn't say good. It surprises me that you can't see some things that could come out of this that really would be good. Well I don't know if you, let me try to quit trying to put words in your mouth. It's going to be good I think. Think if you will. Meshing, wait a minute, yeah meshing I'm trying to make sure you're on subject. Meshing all of those elements with the idea that you're going to bring them together with one consistent idea or community. Very very difficult to do. That's why I'm also saddened that Menal is not here. We talked about this beforehand and she gets it. I hope that whoever is doing it now, I guess it's the presenter, if he gets it. But here's the thing I see. Remember I said at the very beginning, Siemens City are the lower area of the plan. You can come up with ideas that would help and my business is very close to that area. Here's one of the problems we're having. Come up with ideas as to where you put your trash collection containers that everyone has some input into and it's located where it's not such an eyesore. Come up with rules and possibilities of what we do to take care of how the outer structures of all of those areas look in some way. I don't know how yet until we start talking about some of these things. The lack of places for young people to go and play safely. We don't have that now and you know where my mind is, is in the lower income areas. That's what I'm looking at. That large area by UNT where all those kids and all those low-income residents live. How do we mesh that and make it a good environment for them and the rest of the area? I can't see why you can't. No, no, I shouldn't say that. So that's just what I see and I think that we'll possibly make that happen. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right, we have a motion and a second. Have no more blue cards on this item. Let's vote on the board please. I thought I already did. Motion carries 6-0. Move on to agenda item 5D. What time is it? All right, after this we'll take a break after this. Agenda item 5D. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, authorizing the city manager to initiate foreclosure proceedings on property known as lot 8A, block 7 of the Jasper addition. Mayor and members of the council, a contract was signed in October 2008 with Mr. Joseph Fagans and his sister, Lovetta Jackson, for the reconstruction of their housing unit at 803 Lakey Street. The project was completed in 2009. The project carries a 20-year note and as you may recall from our program guidelines that a partial, what we have, the program sets up a partial loan and a partial grant. For Mr. Fagans and Ms. Jackson, they were paying approximately 175 per month and $269 per month was being forgiven. Mr. F agans' sister, Ms. Jackson, passed away in 2012. Mr. Fagans passed away in July of 2014. The housing unit has been vacant since that time. Approxim ately 78,000 is still owed on the property. Staff, Alma Espino, our housing programs manager, is here tonight. She had attempted to contact the heirs to the property and was not able to get in touch with them. We did meet with some other property, excuse me, some other members of the family who had an interest in the property and tried to get to work out things with them and we were not able to work anything out. The unit was broken into one time back in 2016 so part of what we want to do is make sure that the housing unit is still able to house a family and not deteriorate. We also, as it says in the in the backup, I just think it's important to note that this is the first time the program began in 1984-85 and this is the first time we've had to foreclose on a property . We'll be happy to answer any questions you have. We do have a blue card wishing to speak and we'll take that public testimony after staff discussion for a vote. Council member Gregory. Thank you. This, if this were to approve a motion to foreclose, does that mean that it absolutely will be foreclosed upon or would the city still have an opportunity to negotiate? In other words, could this possibly bring some of the heirs to the table that have not been working with us previous to this or does this absolutely require foreclosure? Council member Trey Lance for Deputy City Attorney, the motion before you tonight, or what we're proposing, is that you just give us approval to foreclose. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to go forward. Certainly if one of the family members wanted to step up, we would be more than happy to try to still work something out with them, but community services have tried so much that we think that it's time that we need to move this forward one way or another. So this would allow us to do that, but certainly if they wanted to step forward , we'd be more than happy to work with them. All right. And something else to note is that the funds, the $78,000 that may come from a foreclosure, will go back into the program to assist other families in the community. Council member Briggs. So that that was kind of my question because it says in the backup that we would foreclose and then sell the property. No? Well when it's foreclosed, it is sold at the sheriff's sale. Okay, and that would come to the city. Is there a way that we could use that? Because there is a shortage of affordable housing. Could we guarantee that we could put family in that home and house them? Like is there, does the city have our own stock of housing? Could we build that up and make sure we have a place? It would depend on how the forecl osure sale goes. Typically once it goes to a sheriff's sale, you know, us being the lien holders, we would you know put up the amount that we're actually owed on the house, but because the sale is open to the public, if other people were to come in and bid more on the house and the city is owed, then they could technically buy the house from the city and we would get the money from the sale and then it would be up to us to refund the funds that are still outstanding for the grant as well as then put the money in trust that if there's any overages it 's supposed to go to the original property owner. Okay. Council member Hussb eth. So that's a fair question. So do the heirs understand that last component because that seems like it would be competing interest, right? If you you can take on a debt or you can take on a surplus. If I understand that right, am I am I am I characterizing what you said as as far as if you because I believe you'll understanding where it is I think it'll attract more than what's owed and then you said that surplus then goes to the owners which would then trickle down to the heirs. Am I tracking with you? Right, eventually. I mean it wouldn't be up to us to prove their particular those particular heirs ownership of that money that'd be up for them. We'd have to you know put the money in trust and let them try to prove that up or put it into a registry of the court . Got it. And then to follow up on council person, I'm curious is there another mechanism by which we could take ownership without sending to a sheriff sale or is that the only mechanism? Unfortunately with the real estate documents that we have that the only way that we could actually take fee possession of the house is through foreclosure because right now all we have is a lien interest. Okay, thank you. You can come. I've got a couple of questions, but I'm gonna let the public speaker Mr. Husband. You're up. State your name and address . Your time begin. There's really that's what's under 6 23 Newton. I know this family sentence me that they're losing their home. I can identify with them so much per one job had I not gotten it, I would be where they are. One job at the time I got it. I want to make sure that everything that they have done that we have done we that we've done everything we can do to try to keep that family at home. One thing that I know now at this late date finding out is you could have done is going to the church that both families are members of. Explain to them what was going on and then the church would then I'm almost positive that they would have stepped in and tried to do something to spare this family the situation that that they have found themselves in being out on the street and you they the people who are giving you the information kind enough to let you see what produced the hardship that they found themselves in. I know you just you can't you should not be put in position to try to do something to try to take care of everyone that you are that come before you in situations like this. But I think the Bible talks about this kind of behavior or lack of effort if you could make some of these efforts will come back to haunt you as well. I know this you have haunted me. Bible constantly talks about take care of the poor, the widows and the orphans. Always talking about those. That's how you show love. So I'm telling I'm not telling you. My thought is have we done everything that we possibly can. Is there any way to slow this up and allow me and well me because I'm the only one standing here to get to that church and to find out what is the thing they could do to help keep this family in that in their living quarters. My heart was saddened about what we've done to those homeless people and I've reached out to that that person who spoke tonight and I'm going to look into this tent thing. We got to quit doing what we're doing. I shouldn't say that . I've got to quit doing what I'm doing and not taking care of these homeless people and people who are finding themselves in these certain situations. I just asked can we do something to promote some honor to let me see what I can do . If you can't, fine. All right thank you. We have another card. Deb Armatar, I know that our rules say the card has to be turned in for the call of the the agenda item. I made a mistake tonight so I'm going to have some some discretion. I have discretion as the chair so this is an important topic and I want to I want you to be able to speak so if you'll come state your name and address your time will begin because we do have three council members queued up to for questions or comments. Thank you Deb Armatar 2003, Missy Woodland. Thank you very much and I would have understood had you said no I actually had filled it out earlier and it was sitting right there at my feet. It's been that kind of day. Anyway I want to echo Willie's sentiments about just how you know how terrible foreclosure is and I you know I could tell by the staff presentation that that staff has already been been working really hard on this so I know that it's not that nothing has been done there has been something has been done but you know I would hope that somebody would you know make a motion to see if more can be done if Willie could talk to the church if anything you know if the community could could get together if this doesn't have to happen if there's anything we could do and I too like Willie can't help but think about this this morning's news story that many of us woke up to this morning to find that a tent community of homeless people in southeast Denton had been raised and that it's a property owned by the city. The fact that these people were living on city-owned land means that you all really have a lot of control over that area. I do understand that there are fire hazards and you know safety hazards with waste but that's not because homeless people are a fire hazard they're not homeless people are not a hazard to anybody they just want someplace to sleep. The reason why there's a fire is because they don't have another source of heating and possibly it's used for food preparation too I wasn't able to figure to find that out today but whatever they're using it for surely the city could provide a safer way for people to stay warm a safer way for people there to eat porta potties and you know what does all of this have to do with foreclosure well a lot it's all part of the same issue and that spectrum of from homelessness to affordable housing we've got as you all know a real problem a big waiting list for affordable housing and when we're you know when I look at the money being spent in the consent agenda and things like you know for almost $5,000 on a turkey trot something you know fundraiser I mean that that money could have could have provided a porta potty you know to this community that was already living on city property surely there's something we can do to help this family instead of having them be foreclosed upon thank you so much that concludes our any people wish to speak filling out blue cards mayor pro Tim I have two questions of staff one is there not an open probate matter for either of the decedents and two are there any superior li ens no ma'am there's not an open probate that was something we were looked into and there's not and we have the superior lien on the property okay customer Gregory just for clarification is there currently anyone living in this property the people that were living no no one is living in the housing unit right now it's the people that were living there at the house where are they not living there anymore that passed away mr. Fagans and his sister miss Jackson lived in the unit they passed away and now it is vacant so if this house is foreclosed upon nobody is going to be moved out of the home no no thank you customer headspace and that was going to be my point and I if I could ask mr. Langley down please so that that's one point that council member Gregory made that there is no one in the home that they're both deceased and to close the other loop not naming names but we spoke with the pastor in that within us ten steps of that home and and had that very conversation about that property or I was late to the meeting but you sat in on the meeting yes we did have a conversation about looking at some parking in that area is that the conversation yes sir and we mentioned the home to that church kind of what was intimated I don't remember all the aspects of that but I do remember the conversation and is there a particular question that you have yeah well no I just as people were concerned about us not contacting churches I want to make it clear that we did contact the church and we had a whatever let's say 30 40 minute meeting yes sir we did have a conversation about that home and that general area yes sir we did we met with parks director myself you the pastor we did have that conversation it's been a few months but yes we do yes sir no no just wanted to just wanted to clear that up yes sir thank you I would also mention that we met with pearly fagans mr. F agan's other sister and her daughter and her daughter's husband and talked with them about getting together with the heirs to the property and trying to work something out and so we met with family members not the heirs to the property but other family members who wanted to use the house for his other sisters to live there but they were not able to work anything out Councilman Ryan it says since the house is now vacant the only way to put it back into housing stock which it's it's probably fall in that low-income range would be to follow up on this foreclosure or for the family to move forward is that that is correct that'd be the only thing that we could do Councilmember Ryan is that right now all we have is a lien interest in the property so the fee interest is technically in the in the hands of a state that is not being handled through a probate proceeding at this time so the only thing that we could do is the city is to foreclose and try to get it back into you know a family in there back where somebody else could move in there yes sir thank you councilmember Briggs to follow up you had a conversation with other relatives that said they wanted to move into the house but could not yes they they talked about trying to get the house for miss F agan's and we're going to talk to the heirs to the property but nothing ever nothing was ever decided or they did not work together it just didn't work out okay do you know do they currently live in our in Denton yes I believe they leave I don't know their address but they live in dead okay okay I see no other speakers I got a couple comments councilmember Briggs when you say do you know if they live in didn't who's the day you're referring to the people that they were trying to get moved into the home the people she met with yes okay yeah yeah I am I met I was in that meeting because I you know I've received emails and the phone calls that that this was going on and someone had reached out to me who was a friend of the families and I met with them I looked at everything that we've done to try to get in this is a very complicated number one legal matter because the the estate is in limbo I reached out via all the contact information that we had to the what is considered to be the rightful heirs of the home who would need to cooperate in signing the proper legal documents in order for I believe miss Fagans to live in that property I reached out to them via email via a mailing address that we had the only mailing address we had I even made a phone call to phone numbers that that we had I received no response I did this back in I don't remember when it was the summer or something some early summer something like that so yeah this is a very difficult matter for the city because nobody sitting up here wants to do that but we have an obligation based upon the funds that we receive from the federal government so what I mean would I would some of our funds either be in jeopardy or would we have to pay this back or what I mean talk about just just briefly what does the program require this the program requires you just can 't have something sitting there idle is that is that part of the the grant programs from HUD well certainly the the Department of Housing and Urban Development expects us as a grantee to monitor these units and the funding that we put into them and if something like this occurs they expect us to take action to make sure that the unit is either housing a low and moderate income person or that the funding comes back into the program as far as what they would do you know they would have to come and monitor us and see that something like this was taking place sure so and it seems like that the only way to get that money back into our program to to continue to help low-income families is just to unfortunately exercise the rights that that we have based upon the deed of trust that were signed and the proper real estate documents yeah I hate to see this as well because I've met with that family so I understand their concern and there it's just very frustrating to see families not being able to work together for the good of the entire family to the point where these kind of things happen so I feel confident that outside of trying to hire somebody to track people down and have a personal conversation with them we've done pretty much all we can do to try to facilitate these conversations and my fear is that we may run afoul of some type of grant rules and regs that could jeopardize our ability to receive additional funds and I don't think it would be as much as we hate doing this with this house because of you know someone 's there willing to move into it that would fit the the the parameters of people that we you know the low income that we put on this program but we can't get the cooperation from the legal owners or potential legal owners to in order to do that so it's yeah I mean I I think I've called I don't know how many times they have we had any updates have we had any updates and it was some point they just had to bring this forward so I don't like it any more than anybody else does up here you know anybody who spoke so hopefully that we can is this I've heard sheriff sale be batted around is this a sheriff sale or is this a sale out at the courthouse steps that's on the first Tuesday or second Tuesday of the month right no technically be a trustees sale trustee sale yes okay all right I think sheriff sale was used sometime it just kind of stuck but it 's it would be a trustee sale of the deed of trust okay all right and so technically if we bid our lead at lean amount at the trustee sale and nobody else bid it what happens with the home we would we would get it for that we would own the home right okay and then we could do at that point we would own own the fee of the home and we could do what we wanted to with it whether it would be try to you know use it ourselves for something or then to resell it ourselves to try to use and then would use all of that money to put either into the program or do something else with sure either way either the house or the value received from the house will be put back in the program to help low- income families is an understanding yes that's correct okay all right okay any other questions comments mayor pro tem did we already do this I think we did motion in a second no I think so I'll move to adopt and just for the record I have zero heartburn about this if the family wanted the property it would take like $100 a month or something like that and they could hang out there and really nobody would nobody would care so maybe I'm just jaded from all the probate cases but I don't have any heartburn thank you mayor pro tem customer thank you mayor I will second it with the thought that this is going to allow this house to help a family in the future that it goes back into low income housing in our community okay we have a motion in a second let's vote on the board please for agenda item 5d motion carries 6-0 it's 830 let's take about a 5 or 10 minute break all right welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council at 8 33 p.m. on November the 7th 2017 we're going to pick back up our regular meeting agenda with agenda item 5e considered option of an ordinance accepting competitive proposals and awarding a public works contract for directional boring services for Denton municipal electric mayor council members I'm Rowdy Patterson electric distribution superintendent for DME what we're here to discuss tonight is directional boring services RFP 6516 a little bit of background on the directional boring that we 've done in the past DME performed some small bores back in the mid 1990s however was quickly determined that that wasn't something that we needed to be doing due to the specialized equipment it would be more efficient if we were to contract this out and let somebody that had the expertise in this to do it we have utilized contractors for installation of underground since February of 2000 and directional boring was a part of that original contract in 2004 the city went out for a true directional boring contract for us in the water department to utilize and RFP 6516 includes all the labor everything involved in in the actual performance of this except for the materials which we supply why do we use directional boring directional boring provides an alternative to the original ditch digging gives us less traffic disruption ability to install under streets drainage ditches ponds lower cost of surface restoration shortens completion times and it's safer for the environment this is just a typical boring rig that you would see out in one of the projects here's a list of some of the active projects that we have that include directional boring on them RFP process request for proposals were sent out to 464 prospective suppliers by the purchasing department we had three proposals that were returned committee consisting of the water department purchasing wastewater DME evaluate the proposals based on the published criteria purchasing went out for the best and final offer and this was to clarify some line-item pricings CNC directional boring LLC was ranked the highest and term ed to be the best value for the city as exhibit one shows you our recommendation is to award of a contract to CNC directional boring LLC in the five-year not to exceed amount of three million based upon previous historic spend history this contractor was the lowest cost respondent who also had the highest evaluated score any questions any questions for staff we do have a public comment any questions for staff it this is my only question it's really it's more of a statistic do you know how much of the at least the distribution system is underground in the city 57% that's that'll be in the next presentation that I make on the underground contract okay good yes it is 57% all right thank you mr. Willie Huspeth mission to speak all right thank you sir councilmember Gregory as member eggs move approval of the item councilmember breaks I'll second you have a motion and second let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero go on to agenda item 5f considered option of an ordinance accepting competitive proposals and awarding a public works contract for underground electric installation services for didn't municipal electric sort of jumped the gun on that last question all right again rowdy Patterson superintendent DME RFP 6518 is for the underground electric installation services background on that again since 2000 we've utilized contractors to help approximately seven fifty seven percent is underground and over the past eight years the contractors have completed 25 to 45 percent it ranges it varies in there according to workload of all the electric distribution underground projects that we have this is just an example of a picture of the massive duck bank that we put out on Western Boulevard coming out of one of our substations it's there to help support the industrial growth that will be in the area here's another picture of it after it was covered with concrete we do that to protect the conduit system DME currently has 45 different underground distribution projects in various stages that have already been let they've already been designed and released for us to construct this is just a small sampling of those projects this is loves was one of the projects that was on there this is a picture of the construction that's going out at loves here's another picture of the contractor that's doing the work out there forecasted projects we have 56 residential and commercial projects in various stages of the planning process we also have 34 underground feeder extension and improvement projects in the various stages also this is a pretty good list of those right here our P process went the same as the other one we helped we had 325 perspective suppliers 3 proposals were received best and final offer was conducted which clarified line island pricing again and FX 5 construction and excavation was ranked the highest it was determined to be the best value recommendation is to award the contract FS 5 construction and excavation in the three-year not to exceed amount of 6 million based upon previous spend history this contractor again was the lowest cost respondent who also had the highest evaluated score customer breaks you you may have covered this but does this have anything to do with the the GIS installation that we're doing the underground lines for that that is that something different it is an actually involved that went out for a separate bid but they we will town to some of the condos that there's extending out of that sub in this contract and we'll do some of that okay thank you mr. wood husband wishing to speak agenda I'm 5f just a couple of questions do because I I think 57% given that we're an old city so most of our city the inner core has been above ground distribution are there is there a program or because I know anything new pretty much is underground I mean subdivisions do we have a program or some type of vision to where we put maybe existing distribution underground in various parts of the city or is that just because it's just too costly or something like that yeah probably since yeah that's a great question mayor we do budget money each year for overhead to underground conversion so we do have budgeted monies that are loud for that to occur and you're correct the denton does have a dent in plan that says all new subdivisions will be going in underground so anything new that comes in that hasn't been here we do install underground okay great is 57% for a city our size I don't know what that is come you know what's the benchmark I mean is that good is it average is it what we've been trying to find some good benchmarks for that but from every all the indicators that we've seen that is one of the leading percentages in the state of Texas we don 't have a good benchmark across the board but it seems to be one of the leading amounts of having underground great thank you very proud of that thank you very much appreciate it any other questions for staff mayor pro-tem move for approval of this item customer Ryan was second have a motion to second let's vote on the board please motion carries six zero moving on to agenda item 5g consider approval of resolution amending resolution resolution number r2 0 1 7 - 0 4 o regarding a steering committee to consider and advise the City Council on renovation operation options good evening mayor members of council appreciate the opportunity to come before you this evening this particular item is stated it's a resolution to a previous resolution essentially it's associated with the City Hall West steering committee back on October 17th resolution 2017 - 0 4 0 was approved by council and essentially was assisting intent of that particular resolution was to establish this steering committee to help staff move forward with the development of future use for City Hall West resolution 2017 - 0 4 0 as stated here established a 24 member steering committee of which three council members and 21 citizens the 21 citizens there was a residency restriction in that particular resolution requiring council member appointees from council districts one through four to to live in those particular districts again the the purpose of the committee was to assist with the development of the future plan for City Hall West the steering committee would be in effect until those efforts were completed or until January 1 of 2019 the particular resolution for consideration this evening essentially removes the residency restriction of the nominees also broadens the council's ability to participate on any and all subcommittee so it wouldn't restrict where a council particular council member on that steering committee could serve and so we've put information out on our website through some other social media to seek nominations from the community we received about 34 different applications to serve on the committee we're going to bring this back to council for nominations consideration of the nominees on November 14th so if you happen to have folks that you may be interested in like to see if we could get those those names in for for consideration next week basically for staff seeking direction on whether tremendous particular resolution or take additional direction okay yeah primarily it's brought forward to correct that restriction of district appointees only at large would have been anybody this is open up at everybody yeah and then I'd mentioned earlier that you know if there's a way we can maybe scale back that hard date I know that it says until they if they get do it earlier or the maximum time is January 1 I just I'd like to if any way possible to move it back maybe just August 1st or July 1st just we can always extend it don't want to rush anybody but also don't think this is something that's got to drag out for a year so those are my thoughts councilmember Briggs well I have a motion to approve but I guess I could amend to move the date from back to August 1st yeah that'd be fine yeah okay yeah I think that's sure all right yeah I think we can get it done by the end yes you're right we have a councilmember Hutzpahs wishing to speak for direction so then we're gonna call you up mr. I've got your card sitting right in front of me yes go ahead yeah no I don't I don't support I think you can always finish early too without having to move the time and even as time as is you can push that out further so I don't see a need to trun cate the time because it doesn't affect the deliberations of the committee and so I I can't support for just for that issue I just don't it's it's five million dollars potentially and I think it's okay they can finish early right and then there's nothing that says it has to take a year it just takes as long as it takes we don't have to truncate anything smart people put it together for I think a good reason they they have experience in that and so hopefully we can leave it as is and if the group finishes early they finish early if they need more time they need more time but let's not just change it for the sake of I think that puts pressure on people whereas versus having the freedom to make the decisions as they come organically thanks sure thank you mr. husband say your name and address your town begin mr. husband's did a mayor that's better election coming up anyway I just want to take this opportunity again to say what my concerns are about that this project I already stated in there when I say it again figure out how it fits in with the rest of the plan that you have for that area as to what you're going to look for for from advice from an advisory standpoint from those citizens that you put on that steering committee as you give them the charge how about telling them about what the future or have them figure out what from the standpoint of what's the future of that entire area then plan something for this I think would be a better use of the time that they're putting forward said the same thing to the county commissioners they want me to be on the committee and I said well you got to tell me what is you want me to advise you on before we do that what is that you want us to do I see that same thing here but from the standpoint of what is the whole area going to be like I think that's better planning so I just want to take that opportunity to say that again to you that's that's my concern about this whole project thank you can't remember Briggs I want to recognize you again for your motion just to make sure we're all clear yes so I motion to approve this the amended resolution taking away the residency requirement for the districts and I appreciate that and also moving the date from January 1st 2019 to August 1st customer Ryan second we have motion second vote on the board please no more cards motion carries five one moving on to agenda item 5h considered option of notice of the city of Denton Texas regarding a specific use permit for a drive-through facility in the downtown commercial general zoning district and this is just an item for individual consideration so before we get started I just want to clarify the rules again that on items for individual consideration we do have a card from the applicant to speak but if anybody else is wishing to speak on this item if you could get your card in like right now if not then because it's not a public hearing per se just wanted to make sure I made that announcement okay we'll go ahead start staff presentation good evening mayor council Richard Canone in our planning director I just wanted to give just touch on a little bit of the background on the site just for those that may not have been here for the first the first hearing properties located at the intersection of North Texas and interstate 35 East there was a McDonald's that was previous there previously there as well as a gas station and IHOP which are still there now you can see the the difference between 2015 and post acquisition where there was some right away or property taken as part of right away the request was for an SGP specific use permit for the drive-through this was considered by City Council on August 15th the item was continued to November 7th with the request that the applicant prepare a TIA or traffic impact analysis and bring back those results one other item that I just wanted to add as a result of the opposition from the surrounding neighbors that being the University of North Texas it exceeded the 20 % so supermajority is required for for passage of this item if I could maybe clarify what the city attorney supermajority is required we do have a council member that is absent what is the implication or impact of that on this deliberation on all if the council were to choose to approve the SUP all six of you must vote unanimously it is six it's counted as if the whole board not those members who are present okay thank you I'm sorry go ahead and lastly so the the the TIA was completed by half an associates on behalf of McDonald's they conducted traffic council on September 19th and 20th and then submitted a final report to the study at this point I'll turn it over at pre-temp since he was the one involved in reviewing and that report in analysis good evening mr. mayor council members traffic impact analysis just a brief overview of what exactly we're looking at we typically conduct these to assess the impact of what the site would generate once it's completed and as part of that scope we had included some of these items trip generation is pretty basic what the site will generate but what we heard in the previous council meeting we also included some additional items review the traffic movement and along the frontage road review side access for that particular project site and then also look at some pedestrian routes and activities here's the trip duration for the previous project that existed there it consisted of three different uses I hop McDonald's and the gas station and the total trips generated by the entire site would be 308 in the a.m. peak hour 286 to the p.m. peak hour and little over 6,000 during the entire day now the proposed project will replace the I hop as well as the McDonald's building and the gas station is completely gone as part of the text out winding project so the total site would end up generating 181 a.m. peak hour 130 p .m. and then just under 2,000 trips in a daily so what happens in the net trips when we look at it that total site is generating negative trips that are actually were taking out trips that were on the system sir on the on North Texas as well as the frontage road around the project site so as a result of that there's no need to look at actual intersection impacts because the trips are getting reduced so what we did in the traffic study the consultant looked at other issues that were brought up the first issue was the location of the ramp if you look at the side which is Martin in the black here and this is the previous location of McDonald's building the driveway existed right about here and the old ramp off ramp was here so it was pretty close about 185 feet from the exit from the main lanes so traffic was cutting about two or three lanes to get to the actual McDonald's entrance and now with the new configuration the ramp has been moved and shifted about 620 feet from the proposed access point for McDonald's so we have enough distance here much better flow situation better improvement for traffic to react and merge and weave through the section so this is overall access for McDonald's has increased as part of the textile project I do want to point out here that this is the phase that was recently completed or just kind of wrapping up right now the next phase will only look at these widening of these inside lanes and the ramp location does not change so irrespective we go into the next phase the location of ramp is not going to change then we also looked at the side access there are four access points for the proposed project two of these that one on the frontage as well as North Texas Boulevard are right in right out there are no left out or left into the project at these two locations obviously this is a one-way street and this has a median North Texas has a median so it's a right and right out the two on Wil shire and Kendal are a full-axis driveway majority of the traffic will enter the project side on the frontage about 50% and then 35% at the North Texas Boulevard just to give you an order of magnitude when you look at the numbers there are about 46 strips that would be entering in the peak hour on the frontage road and about 30 I have that number right here just a little over 30 entering from the North Texas Boulevard and then last but not least there are some pedestrian concerns that were brought up last time if you look at to the left is the UNT master plan there they are developing this whole area on the other side of 35 and their current master plan plans all pedestrians will be routed over the pedestrian bridge through their campus into the main gateway area and they already have this gateway area and access completed on the campus but there might be some trickle traffic that would cross North Texas Boulevard and which will go along the sidewalk and crosses particular driveway which is not the highest used driveway for proposed project it's the second highest but this is a typical situation throughout the campus a lot of businesses on Eagle Drive have similar situations where outside of up in front of these access driveways and since this is a right in right out a lot of times their their visibility is higher while people are slowing down to turn right as opposed to left ends and these are all the elements that were studied the traffic study any questions guess my right thank you mayor if this were a green space lot if there hadn't been businesses existing here prior to this with the number of drives been allowed under our code for four access points number of driveways for this particular project the access point would have we would have looked at lower impact streets for access points so typically our code requires if a property can access on a lower for example on a residential street or a collector street then you'd rather provide access there as opposed to an arterial and that that is true and I think as the frontage acts furniture road accesses text out so typically text dot if there is existing access they allow access irrespective okay thank you thank you all right no more questions see no more questions thank you is there additional staff presentation or okay all right mr. Willie Husbeth come down state your name all right Greg Mas sey if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin so madam city secretary since he's representing a group is it is it ten minutes or what it yeah there's there's a is it such in Brooks Jimmy Lopez and Dean Stuller are y'all present okay yeah and so it I'm sorry how many yes that yeah at all yes I think there's a ten minutes okay for individual or for all of us yeah for all of you yeah yeah where's the public hearing I believe last time that's why I 'm saying that was it a public hearing last time yes yes it was a public hearing this is items for individual consideration that's why I said in the beginning if you wanted to speak to fill out a blue card and the green card is a group request to speak on an agenda item which means that typically people are only allowed is it three minutes or four minutes for a regular item it's three minutes three minutes so if you have more than four people you get ten minutes so because he's using the green card right yeah so give them a moment to come to the microphone please Jimmy Lopez 2020 lower Valley Drive Keller Texas I'm also on the applicant there so do we need to fill out a blue card for each and I guess it's as we take questions there may be different subject matter experts that may be able to answer your question is more the concern no I'm gonna let you fill out a blue card so that means you'll have three minutes to speak which means this green card if mr. Massey wants to speak you only have three minutes because now we've only got three people on the card so that's last time it was a public hearing that's why it was anybody no no that's okay I'm not I'm not here to cut anybody off from being able to speak so yeah if you'll fill out a blue card while mr. Massey comes forward to speak that'd be great yes you bet and I apologize for no no that's okay we'll get it all worked out not a problem again I'm Greg Massey with Red Plains professional so three minutes is that correct yeah yeah three minutes okay Greg Massey with Red Plains professional representing McDonald's and I'm gonna try and keep this brief so that we can give you the opportunity to ask questions of us I think you recall why we're here trying to get the SUP from the previous meeting in August I think the outcome of that was a traffic impact analysis was needed and that's been provided and it does indicate a decrease in the volume of traffic volume of traffic and the number of vehicles entering and exiting that site so so with that being said I'm going to step back and open it up to the council or for the other individuals okay all right any questions for this speaker council no thank you okay mr. Jimmy Lopez if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin before my time begins my only question is if we have to have supermajority six out of six and miss McGurray's not here does it matter if she hears what we have to say or what is that and maybe it 's a question for the city attorney I just could you repeat your question again well we're missing the one councilman so she should probably hear what we have to say or or we good well yeah well I mean I count mayor pro tem it makes her own decisions I don't know she's maybe taking a break I don't know what the situation is we just have to keep moving forward and let you guys speak and okay she'll just have to know and okay so my name is Jimmy Lopez 2020 Laurel Valley Drive Keller Texas 76248 obviously I'm here on McDonald's behalf and the reason I brought up most of the gari was that there were some concerns she had about the original public hearing he made along with mr. Hudspeth and along with mrs. Briggs on further clarification so what we did as a team we actually went outside of our team of vendors and actually hired an individual was highly recommended has 38 years of traffic impact analysis and we used him over the last couple of months and spared no time and no expense to get you all the information y'all wanted because the last thing I wanted this council to feel like was that McDonald's was trying to pull a wool over your eyes or anything like that I wanted to make sure we communicated and took care of all of mrs. Begari's concerns along with mr. Hudspeth and all of y 'all's with that said I am gonna turn it over to our subject matter expert he's with half an associates Dean Stuller you're doing this so I've turned it over to him and then we can unless you have any specific questions for me any questions for the speaker as it relates to design layout site layout anything councilmember Ryan thank you my biggest concern was access points on all four sides and in the true need for that if you were only because the traffic count looks to be about what you presented before and it that just seems like a lot of in and out there's no clear path for for walkers in that area and I know that that's not the main path of for people for pedestrian traffic but yes so that's one of the things I reviewed with my team one of the things that I think I really we should do is the access drive off of Avenue D or Texas I believe it's North Texas Drive is we've contemplated actually closing that drive off and put in a nice wide sidewalk moving our our monument sign further down to the Willshire exit so that there is no vehicles traffic so basically the McDonald's development will have no vehicles coming out of it other than on the I the I 35 frontage road sir okay so thank you for your input that was something we considered so you would be amenable to an SUP with an with an what do we call it a provision that the driveway on North Texas Boulevard be closed yes sir I am thank you okay thank you any other questions for the applicant seeing none thank you mr. Dean Stuller and council members Dean Stuller 1201 North Bowser Road Richardson Texas 75081 and I am basically here too we did the traffic study for the for the proposed development and I'm here to answer any questions that you may have regarding the traffic study and what we looked at okay council members any questions for the speaker council member Hudson thank you and I want to echo what this gentleman said absolutely spot-on to to the concerns and so I appreciate that I did and forgive me if I missed it but I did not see anything that touched on the special events that sort of thing the traffic that would be generated if there's a graduation if there's a football game that's that's the only thing that I mentioned traffic wise that I didn't see touched on and again you may have calculated it in and I'm not saying it's every day but I'm saying there it's a concern or at least something I'd like to hear from you regarding that typically well first of all we met we had one meeting with city staff initially to talk about the study itself and the scope and what we need to look at to address the issues that were raised in the previous council meeting doing a traffic study you typically don't look at special events unless you're studying a special event facility like a stadium or something of that nature so we don't typically look at a special event if we're looking at the traffic generator or the trip generation in this instance for a McDonald's restaurant and you're correct during special events you'll probably will have more traffic at the intersection with the 35 E frontage roads and North Texas Boulevard but that would be a special event and not a typical weekday when we do traffic studies we typically look at typical weekday traffic so no we did not focus on a special event and that never really came up in discussions with city staff okay yeah no that would be something that that right or wrong that that is noteworthy to me because they close down that bridge and so you can't turn where traffic would normally kind of flow through that intersection it's all going either straight or right right in the way and that's and that's whatever six games a year and then you have three four five high schools yearly that'll come there for graduations you have the event center where the opera is that draws a crowd or they'll have their their speakers they come twice a year or so so for me it's it's significant and so I just would have liked to have understood that impact on because it because it's right at the corner and it does funnel a lot of people your way and just just right or wrong I could be it could matter not to 80 other people but right I thought I'd like to I would have liked to have seen some right typically like you said they closed the bridge down during games or whatever it really simplifies the traffic flow through that intersection if you think about it it's either just like you said you can either go straight I call it north on the 35 frontage road or you can you can make it you go through a right and then when you're approaching the intersection on North Texas you can only make a right turn to continue up the frontage road so it somewhat simpl ifies the traffic flow pattern at that intersection during that time period yeah there's a game there's homecoming game Saturday I wouldn't call it simplifying but that's okay okay any other questions for the speaker saying thank you thank you next speaker is forgive me if I get the first name rises Sajan Brooks yes mr. Brooks say your name and address and your time will begin thank you Sajan Brooks 808 new Asus Street Austin Texas representing McDonald's and representing the Phillips who are the owner operators and I just want to address to the council members when we were here last time the big issue was the traffic and we performed our traffic impact study which you've seen and we've also agreed to an amendment that would remove a driveway basically what we're asking for is for the facility to go back in and have a frontage access on the 35 a facility that was taken when 35 was widened we want to remind the council that this facility employees 50 employees a lot of them students at the University of North Texas as we've addressed before we would employ a hundred percent students from the University of North Texas if they wanted to work at this location this location also fits in nicely to where people can walk and have access to this dining area they can also walk if they have to have access to their job this store was in place for 40 years this store was a tax generator for the city and we'd ask the council to consider granting this SUP with the modification for the purpose of putting this business back into place and get gaining the tax dollars back into the city of dinner thank you mayor protein I believe has a comment or question yeah I have a question we got a letter for I don't know if it was from you maybe it was from council about the tax value that would be lost to the city obviously sales tax we get about a percent of that sales tax and six percent goes to the state so the majority of the taxes that we get as a city are ad valorem taxes what was the valuation of that property for the Denton County tax appraisal district well I looked it up it was about five hundred thousand dollars so I found that really surprising considering the letter said that you guys believe the property was worth eleven million dollars I don't believe I sent that letter okay somebody sent a letter to us indicating that the property is worth eleven million dollars and so we I looked it up and it was around five hundred thousand on the appraisal district I mean I'm not really sure as far as losing property on our tax rolls that we ever really gained the full amount of value from that property so I just wanted to express my opinion on what the value from a tax perspective is of this property it may be a very valuable piece of property but it hasn't been obsessed that way so the city has not received a commensurate benefit unfortunately and I appreciate that and and I'm sorry that would be through the tax assessor's office that would control that the Denton County assessor's office well actually actually the applicant would have appealed that property valuation every year which is what they did but I'm not sure that we sent that letter I don't know where that letter came from I'm not sure it came from McDonald's okay okay so okay yeah so you got an answer to the question yes I do what is the question were question was regarding the letter and who sent you the letter I believe that letter came from a mr. Shapiro who owns the IHOP property not the McDonald's property okay all right so thank you appreciate it thank you any other questions for staff or for the applicants seeing that I have a question for staff who's yes yeah I don't think it's a traffic issue so I just want to make sure I understand where we are here so currently there can be a building constructed on that property if somebody wanted to put whether it's a McDonald 's or an IHOP or a Chick-fil-a or you name it you know fast food restaurant if there wasn't a drive-through being requested it could be built on that piece of property is that correct that's correct okay so the SUP is being required for the drive- through facility that's correct okay all right thank you okay any other questions for staff councilmember Gregory okay councilmember Ryan thank you mayor according to our backup the P&Z had also made a recommendation that substantially comply with the site plan and of course that would be have to be a minute for that would you accept that as a friendly amendment I would in that case I will second all right we have a motion a second let's vote on the board please motion fails what's that I missed it for two okay let's re-vote yeah let's re-vote if y'all could punch your motion signs again yeah because I hit the wrong button okay motion ties and I'm not sure what the implication of a tied motion is it fails since you needed a super majority in order to pass this this was a motion to approve so motion fails okay all right thank you thank you mr. city attorney all right we'll move on to agenda items 6a which is public hearings agenda item 6a is hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance of the seat of Denton Texas regarding an initial zoning classification of neighborhood residential 6 in our six good evening again mayor council Richard Canone in our planning director other the request is the mayor stated is for the initial zoning for the property located at the northeast corner of May Hill and Mills Road the property for the most part is is surrounded majority by ETJ property there's the school to this Ryan High School to the south as well as the the landfill and some unincorporated single-family residential sort of scattered scattered throughout the app with the applicant is requesting is is the NC six looking at the future land use it has a land use of moderate residential which promotes a density between 4 and 12 units so it is compatible with the future land use looking at the mobility it is located on a May Hill which is is planned as a primary primary art arterial and Mills which is a collector May Hill is currently planned for expansion and realignment Mills would be done as platting occurs within that within that area there was public notification sent to those within the the city limits we received one in opposition one in favor so it didn't trigger the the 20% requirement this did go to planning and zoning they recommended approval 7-0 and with that I'd be happy to answer any questions councilmember Briggs has a question so on the at Mills in May Hill will that stop sign remain right there that four-way or three-way stop I think it is because I will say I drive that and it is a mess right especially when school is starting and ending and if May Hill was not being redone this would not be a good idea but as to the stop control at that intersection I don't know what the specific plan on top of my head really is it whether it's a stop sign or it for sure the stop sign would remain I don't know if we're actually signalizing that one I believe we were looking at a TIA to show that for the entire corridor but at least there would still remain a three-way three-way stop no it would just be a stop sign on Mills so it'd be one way so may help may would not would be just be going yes okay unless the TIA generated a response that we needed to signal there when you get a four -lane facility like that with a two-lane driveway coming into it putting the stop signs on those opposing roads creates a lot more confusion a lot more chances someone may roll through it and cause an accident so how would anyone leaving that neighborhood or the school turn left they'd have to wait for their gap yes ma'am because there's a lot of students I mean I guess I guess that's a whole May Hill conversation but I mean for this okay thank you that's something to think about all right yeah what was that the end of your president okay all right any other questions for staff before we open the public hearing seeing none okay I will now open the public hearing I have no cards wishing to speak but this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin councilmember Briggs oh I have another step question okay anybody else anybody wishing to speak this is a public hearing one more time anybody else wishing to speak seeing no movement we will now close the public hearing councilmember Briggs oh was somebody did somebody oh did somebody raise their hand okay all right all right thank you councilmember Br iggs so yeah how how would you enter and exit into the where the into the neighborhood would that be straight on to May Hill and Mills would there be or is it just on to Mills and then I mean so they're in a state of flux where they're looking at another alternative as mr. Dishman answered earlier our preference would be that it would come out on Mills and not on to May Hill okay so it's changing originally they had one exit and entrance off of May Hill and then one off of Mills they're looking at something different at this point we don't know what that is okay yeah come on down here if you can answer that question you better just state your name and address and before he does could you show me again where's the 16 is is it the black hatched that's the corner that the parcel we're talking about rezoning is the black hash mark there okay all right thank you Aaron graves I'm at 106 West Louisiana McKinney I'm the civil engineer on the potential project so this rezoning case we when we met with city staff they recommended that we are actually urged us to not provide access off of May Hill Road so our current plan is to have two means of access off of Mills Road and that would be where it would be completely loaded off of that off of that street and what is it currently zoned it's the RD 5x okay so it's the it came in on the annex got you yeah I got you okay all right thank you thank you for answering that question oh you have another maybe in the back just how many how many homes are you planning on putting here we're currently looking at about six per acre or around 86 but that's still to be determined so 86 but it's still to be determined okay coming out of one driveway one two any other questions for staff councilmember Ryan I know we did a rezoning of the kind of on that corner of 288 and in May Hill how far I can't remember how far across that came how close to May Hill does that CMG now run do we know that good evening I believe the CMG zoning came approximately to here and then extended into the property and followed up along this line okay thank you did I answer your question yes councilmember Briggs can somebody so the improvements to Mills Road what what that would be can you give me an update on what that would look like it still will be a two-way with no turn lane or anything like that right when we receive the preliminary plat submittal we're going to look at that we're going to look at the access issues and their whatever perimeter street pavement improvements are required per our new roadway impact fee policy will be applied here okay so and not knowing their layout not knowing how many access points they're going to have or exactly where they'd be located it's hard to give much specifics at this point but that's something we will we will look at their next amendment which is the preliminary flat okay yeah I understand this is just the zoning but putting that many homes without knowing okay thank you anybody else wishing to speak I I'll just share my thoughts briefly I'm concerned about the density there the NR6 density at the corner especially with the Mills Road not necessarily being improved and I know that depending on road impact fees there might have to be some some so that's my concern six units per acre to 86 homes you know if it's an NR4 I mean six units per acre is a lot size of gosh it's got to be 6,000 square feet or you know somewhere around in there maybe a little less 6,500 depending on the roads so I 'm gonna I'm gonna struggle with this at that density level at that at that location but certainly don't struggle against the project in general it 's just that density level any other council members council member Ryan well that was kind of my my reason for asking about how far over that CMG came because that's going to act as a buffer CMG would allow multifamily and businesses in there and see this is as being a buffer into the future expansion on out into the ETJ and in other annexed areas I think that's true I think that alright I see no more discussion chair would entertain a motion or action on this item council member Brian I will move approval council member Ryan makes a motion to approve council member Hudson second we have a motion and a second for approval on agenda item 6a let's vote on the board please motion fails four to two all right move on to agenda item seven concluding items council members concluding items mayor pro tem a few first I'd like to have a work session on our current public improvement district ordinance it came to my attention that the public improvement district was never put before PNC or I don't believe planning how to say in it it went through the economic development committee and it's very vague so I think we need to firm up the public improvement district language and also in that work session if we could get a briefing as far as what clarion might be doing with respect to the public improvement district zoning because they have a public a planned district zoning that they have inserted into the first draft but I don't know if that's what that is in relation to the public improvement district two if we could just get a briefing on actually I think you addressed that so I'll cancel that the second item would be if we can talk have a work session about the tent city that was raised and what maybe going forward you know there will be other tent cities that come up so if we could maybe have a policy with respect to that councilmember Briggs all right so I would like an update on the tree ordinance I know it's been in P&Z for a while but I would really like that to come to council for a discussion and going along with the the tree ordinance I would like to revive talks about purchasing the stands of trees for preservation and an update on our our tree fund with all the development I would also like an update on the hands-free and though the warnings and tickets that have been issued the amount of tickets and the the fees for that sorry for what I didn't like the hands-free hands-free okay I'm sorry I didn't kind of an update on where we stand if there's been issues for the police issuing tickets and how many tickets if we have issued and in light of the theater downtown going up for sale people have been reaching out to me and asking about making that historic building and I brought up once before but I like to bring it up again to have council talk about what it would take to get our downtown on a national historic register the downtown itself if that's something and and then Sarah mayor pro tem brought up the the tent city one of our speakers tonight mentioned an urban urbanizing tent city I made a note but if staff could give me or give us a report on what that is and what what cities are doing what that looks like thanks that's my run thank you mayor we have a didn't development code sub committee that was obviously created by an ordinance and I would it was created prior to my being on council I signed up for it in May and we have not met yet so I'm not sure what it's charged with so if we can get that ordinance sent out in our Friday report and figure out what its purpose is and should it be actually meeting on the updates from clarion at this point you're saying we've got committees that aren't meeting is that what you're saying yes and you would assume that that was what that was charged with yes it's not for sure okay thank you sir councilmember Hudson thank you one thing I needed I need to submit I'll do so this week the my country my contribution to the black film festival and I know there was a packet that came out so I just want others to consider what their contribution is going to be if they're going to just so that Robin can complete that one fatal swoop so I would ask everyone to consider that and it's it's really great event and I think it's it's an interesting dynamic added to our town and it's it's now like one of the largest in the state so those that have not been I encourage you to to just take in some of those events they're fantastic so thank you you welcome and if I may I'm sorry yeah absolutely I want to just give a big thank you to mr. city manager he helped me out with a citizen raising issue about some curbs and and how they're affecting cars and that was able to get resolved that day and we're able to get action going and and I think it's just a testament to the new systems in place and how fast citizens can get action and things can get going and so I really I really appreciate his his attentiveness and staff and and all that kind of work behind the scenes to make make us look great and that doesn 't go unnoticed so I appreciate that I've just got a couple I want to echo those sentiments on the black film festival it is attended some of those last year and what a great event and very crowded and so would really encourage everybody to come out participate in that a couple of questions I would like to get a work session report on the program for underground utilities in overhead distribution areas because I think that's one thing that the more underground utilities that we can get I think it makes our city look cleaner makes it look and plus it cuts down on outages increases reliability so would like to get sort of a review of our program for existing above-ground projects that are looking to be converted to to underground in neighborhoods also wanted to say if you hadn't checked out the highway lights they're sort of all coming on along out 35 where we proved I forgot what it was called but where we had more highway lights than just the standard I've noticed though that some of them are staying on during the day and then not all of them are on so I'm sure they're still working it out but we'll just like to get maybe an informal staff report of when that is all supposed to be working as planned because some of the ones that are out are at entrance and exit ramps and intersections other than that I want to echo council members husband's just kudos to city management staff there's there's many issues that come up that we all get emails about that I think are handled swiftly and if the resolution is able to be found it will be found and I've again want to commend the the staff presentation on the planning development department and our goals to to improve that and to make it something that we're all proud of and we've been working on that for a long time so thank you very much for that and the commitment to that councilmember Gregory about 16 months ago the council passed a comprehensive smoking ordinance and it finally all goes into effect I think January 1 and I've been asking for some information I think it would be good for maybe to get a little more publicity on it for a work session on it about the implementation and the steps that will be taken to ensure I 'm particularly concerned about the 30 feet distance from every entrance to a building because that's going to substantially mean that all of the sidewalks around the courthouse square where their businesses are going to be needing to be smoke free and we need to make sure that we figure out a way to get that word out so if we could get that as a work session and if it if we're too busy with work sessions then we could get it on a information sheet going out to everybody the main thing is to get the word out yep okay fantastic any others all right thank you we will then adjourn at 935 [ Silence ]